Gekka Bijin
by Laryna6
Summary: AU, Contamination Sidequest Event 3. Spinoza gave Asch a detailed explanation of the Big Bang Theory instead of letting him think he was the one doomed by it. It's hard to FORCE someone to return what they're begging to give you. AschLuke
1. Child Martyrs

**Spoilers for pt. 3 of the contamination sidequest, in which Jade talks to Spinoza and finds out why Asch is acting so willing to die. Spinoza gave him a 'simple' explanation of the Big Bang effect, talking about how he'd slowly get weaker, and didn't go into the more complex and distressing stuff like how yes, he would die, but his fonons would transfer into Luke's body and take it over then. This is an AU of that conversation at the beginning, and it goes from there. **

**When playing the game, do NOT miss out on the sidequest. It is why Jade acts the way he does at 'Luke's' return and transforms the game's ending from ambiguous into Miyazaki-style both victory and tragedy. **

**Also, there is a real species called Selenicus Grandifloras, a species of night-blooming cactus. Since they not only bloom at night but, being cacti, are able to live in conditions where other plants would have trouble, they are almost certain to be the basis of the selenias. The Japanese name, Gekka Bijin, means beautiful woman under the moon. **

Also, this is actually complete, I just feel like releasing it a chapter at a time for some reason. Haven't done it that way in... over a year, minimum.

**Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss or any other intellectual property referenced in this fanfiction. Namco and the other rightful owners do. **

A/N: Something I dislike about ToA is that they have all these great emotional conflicts and the characters are constantly saying they don't matter, the fights matter. Wrong. The fights, and Akzeriuth, and Eldrant, and Sync, and Dist, and everyone else is happening _because of_ the emotional conflicts and if they took a month off to compare notes and get everyone's heads on straight things like, oh, Akzeriuth, Ion's death, the Anise/Arietta conflict, and so on wouldn't have happened and everything would have been wrapped up much faster and less bloodily. Luke can blow up cities and no one was investing any effort in making sure he wouldn't suddenly snap when he was under_ that_ amount of pressure?

The headdesk quality of the actions of those he's surrounded with are a lot of why I so admire Luke. He's surrounded by well-meaning sabotage his entire life, start to finish, and he still manages to muddle though. It's not as severe as Naruto's unreality (not being held and played with as an infant equals _severe_ mental retardation), but it's on the limit of what's humanly possible.

Luke's the only who grasps that his issues ARE the problem here. He'd be a lot more effective if he wasn't moping around and no one's even willing to give him five minutes to cry and get it out of his system when somebody dies. 'Get over it' requires actually getting over it: it takes actual _work_ to get something and they aren't giving him any chance to do said work.

I don't really write for Harry Potter because I was worldbuilding an earth with secret magical societies (lots of 'em, they have a UN) in elementary school and Rowling is mostly focusing on characters and, sadly, a really stupid government makes for great opportunities for individual heroism. Because she's not focusing on that she's not taking the flaws in her system to their logical conclusions, and since I've been studying flaws and their effects for so long I can't take her world seriously. My equivalent of the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in my Prism universe is firmly of the opinion that the entire planet should have been scorched rubble by 1700 BC.

Of course, given that the HPverse is very anti-science and their magic is still at the technological development level of slingshots as opposed to refining those principles into, eventually, the strategic nuke perhaps 1700 AD would be a better bet. A bow and arrow is _rocket science_ compared to Avada Kedavra. Those things are very, very highly refined and studied. We learned how to control lightning and the entire world changed. The people in HPverse don't appear to know why their magic works at all, let alone be researching how to colonize Mars & get away from the muggles with the power that lets them have quasi kitchen appliances.

The message? It's hard to realistically have the world's problems be simple enough and the leaders stupid enough that the only person who can solve them is a clueless abused child. I have to applaud Tales of the Abyss for pulling it off, I really do.

ToA's worldbuilding is much better than HP's. The Score is their magic, it and fonons, and they research it and take advantage of it the exact same way we did with their equivalents (electricity, economics) But if Peony assigned them a decent therapist the game would be a third as long, I swear.

-

If Asch had come by earlier, before the New Order had flooded the world with replicas and Belkend's lab had, no, Spinoza had felt compelled to do what he could for them, if Asch had asked about the Big Bang then Spinoza would have thought about it as still a theoretical possibility. Something far too complicated for a layman to grasp.

But the originals of some of the replicas had survived having their replica data extracted for just long enough, and they came here.

The majority of the replicas had blank eyes, too young to have any personality but the programming. The eyes of those whose originals were dying: children so young shouldn't have to bear a pain so great before they came to understand anything else. The one like them who took them in and protected them when they were alone and lost and wandering was dying, and everyone said it was because of them and it couldn't be, right? Please?

That _anguish_.

The fact that they didn't mind what saved their originals made it even more painful.

If he hadn't lost one yesterday and been in the process of losing another Spinoza wouldn't have dropped the very, very expensive piece of fontech he was carrying.

"So, it's that bad."

"But, it's been seven years. Surely if it were going to happen it would have by now." He wanted to reassure himself, but he was a scientist. "Perhaps it's because of the power of hyperresonance that you've held out this long. Luke always has been weaker than he should be. Oh, that poor boy. That poor, poor boy."

"Him? You're feeling sorry for _him_?"

Spinoza needed to sit down. Trying to salvage the equipment could wait until he… oh, the poor boy. "He's the one that's going to die. You'll be fine. The symptoms, are you sure about… No, Luke has grown stronger recently. If you're also growing weaker…" His grimace confirmed that Asch was. "So it has started."

"If I'm growing weaker and he's getting stronger, than how come _he's_ the one in danger?"

It was counterintuitive. The technical details Spinoza would have glossed over as academic became what he focused on, trying to calm down. He might have had a heart attack there, and then where would they be? "Replica data is the original's seventh fonons. They contain the memory of what the body looks like, down to every scar. If a perfect isofone is created, they are, to the original's seventh fonons and their own, part of the original's body that was removed, not a separate individual. Removing those fonons weakens the original's memory of their body and can kill them. If it is only a small amount of damage, then seventh fonons from the replica will be moved to the original's body to compensate, creating the normal phenomenon where the replica is weaker than the original even in cases where the replica should be sturdier." Van had built to last. "If the damage is too much," and Van had wanted the human race to end: only those with a large amount of seventh fonons survived long enough that their replicas could be created before they died, "then the flow will reverse, as to save itself the original's personality and memory will transfer to the other body. Once that process starts, when the original dies the replica's personality, which is separate from the original's, is erased over a few days, until the original wakes up in their new body with nothing left of their replica but their memories."

Spinoza didn't look up at Asch, staring at his wringing hands. "I wish I'd never… it was only academic. I didn't…" He had so much to regret. "That poor boy. I've had three cases since this started, we tried everything, but… There's one who is losing himself now, and I can't watch. I don't have much else to do right now, I should at least be there in case there's something Dr. Shu misses, but I can't watch. They don't mind. None of them have. If it's because they were created that the people they love are dying, then it's only fair that they die if that will save them. And they _smile_. They were ripped out so recently, they don't have their own selves yet, they don't understand what it is to be alive. They only know that their original made them feel complete, because they were a piece that was ripped out of them, and when the original takes them over… the first one said it was what she thought people meant by going home. Maybe, maybe since Luke's so old compared to them he'll retain something of a self? But is it any better to be a voice in someone else's head? Oh that poor boy."

"How long?"

"That depends on how severe the damage to the original is. If it took this long for it to become unfixable, perhaps he has months. If he were to… at least then he'd die himself. But no, I'm not going to even raise the possibility." Ten thousand seventh fonists could be used to get rid of the miasma. Or ten thousand replicas, in combination with the sword and someone with hyperresonance.

"The possibility of what?"

Spinoza was silent now, he wouldn't discuss that with Asch, not after what Jade had written about the effect telling him had on Luke.

"Destroying the miasma?"

"It would require the deaths of ten thousand seventh fonists or replicas, the sword of Lorelei and his own death." But if he was doomed anyway… He didn't want to think this way, Jade would dissect him, but they needed the key, Lorelei had to be freed. "If he does it, he'll die and then you'll die. If you do it, he'll die and you'll live."

Asch didn't understand what Spinoza had just proposed: why was it so horrible? Surely this was the rational choice, and he clearly resented Luke, which was strange. Perhaps because they had been separated? Luke acted far more normally. "Come with me," Spinoza told him sadly.

Belkend's replica lab. What had gone on here… now there were cots everywhere in the areas that had once been cages and cells. Most of them were just so they had a place to sleep, but not the room Spinoza took Asch to.

The original had finally died three hours ago. They hadn't even removed the body yet: they'd called for the family to take it. There was nothing more that could be done.

The programming only included words. Tone of voice, facial expressions: they didn't know them. A replica needed to even learn to recognize their own emotions, and they would often hang onto what seemed like paranoid control because they simply didn't know how to express them. They didn't know how to laugh or cry, they didn't know that those actions would let out what they described as pains in their chests. The ones that found their originals learned quickly, perhaps by some form of osmosis as the fonons circulated between the two.

If they'd still been emotionless perhaps it would have been easy to see this man as a thing. But he was smiling, eyes closed, focused on what was happening as though it was a good thing. The two of them had only been brought in a day ago: the faster the process the faster it was completed. "Rel?" Relan and his family had named him that, Relan's son excited about a daddy that was a little brother until Relan had gotten sick.

He touched him. Dead to the world already, not dead yet but unconscious. He bowed his head in mourning. "The first one, she lasted the longest. She was so happy. She'd been beaten, and her original had saved her. She was crying when she carried her in, she begged us to do something, and then when she died she kept crying, but she was relieved that she could feel her presence, that her original wasn't dead, that she wasn't responsible for her death. She was so happy when she began to wake up. They're all just children, she was like a little girl who was so very happy… She _helped _her original consume her. She said she was giving them herself, and she was so happy to be accepted, to help, to be of use, and she _smiled_. When her original woke up, they didn't want it. They tried to keep her alive, but she was heartbroken. Trying to save her was a _rejection_. She'd cry and cry and…" He paused. Good. It couldn't be heard here, he hadn't wanted to disturb Relan and Rel with what would happen. "Come with me." Outside the door to the room where the first two were restrained they both could hear the screaming, the sobbing. "They remember everything," he told a silent Asch, who now might begin to understand. "Someone so young, just a child, who loved them so much and so purely, was so willing to give up everything for them. And they ate them alive." The sedatives didn't grow in St. Binah anymore and the seventh fonists were overworked: he didn't know what they were going to do. "They know that their replica didn't mind, far from it. But that just makes it worse." Especially for a grandmother with grandchildren about that mental age. The old, like himself, weren't supposed to outlive their children. Not like that.

"I doubt my replacement would be happy about doing his job: he never is." But even Asch's contempt and old rage couldn't cover up a slight hint of something else.

"I hope you're right, for both your sakes."

"There's no way to stop this, and no other way to stop the miasma?"

"I haven't been able to find one." Not even Dr. Balfour himself had any real hope.

And that was it: Asch left Spinoza to his regrets.


	2. Sacrificial Lamb

A/N: Oh, something about why the title is what it is that I forgot to mention is that the name Lorelei means beautiful enchantress.

I was planning to update this only on Fridays like I did in the old days when I was healthy, but since I got three reviews I suppose since people are interested so I'll do you a favor and post early. I'm sticking to Fridays only after this, though, so don't give me pointless 'good job' reviews to get me to update. Is there a fanfic reader who doesn't despise people who hold chapters hostage for reviews?

One review was an argument about the 'that was almost certainly Asch' idea, and since a lot of game fans seem to have missed out on that subquest I'm thinking of looking for a link to the scene or a script of it and putting it on my profile. If I can't find one I'm about to try Nebilim on Very Hard mode for the Tactical Leader title again, and after that is when you can get the final scene with Jade and Dist, so I'll transcribe the script myself. I'd like to thank that person: I like people who have the courage to point out that fanfic authors may have made factual errors so that they can fix them. I think I'll do it anonymously the next time I do it: I ended up unable to comment on a certain livejournal group shortly after pointing out in a review on another group that one of the mods had gotten who won a certain boss battle wrong. It was one of those "the player 'won' the battle in the sense that they didn't die, but the _character_ lost the battle in the sense of plot and was about to get skewered but the boss decided not to" occasions that are so confusing to some people. There are fanboys who will insist that Dante kicked Vergil's ass in every single fight in DMC3, for instance. I'm not kidding.

-

That, that dreck! It was, it was sickening. He wanted to die in Asch's place. Didn't he have any self-respect? Didn't he have any respect for Asch, to think that Asch's replacement was worthless?

No, Asch realized as it pleaded. It did respect Asch. That was the problem. That was why. Now he looked he saw that there were reasons for the self-hate in those eyes. It had stolen everything from Asch and it hated itself for it. It wanted to give Asch his life back, even at the cost of its own. He didn't want it, he didn't want that devotion, he wanted the thing to hate him, fight him, so that he could fight back, damn it! So that he could take back, but he couldn't take what the damn thing was so eager to give.

And it wasn't eager to give because it considered Asch's life worthless. It wanted to _because_ it regarded what it had stolen as so very precious. So precious that it almost couldn't live with having stolen it.

It didn't get the message. It couldn't. It didn't buy the lie that Asch didn't miss his life, it thought that Asch rejected what Luke had because Luke was the one offering. He thought that Asch hated him, and he did, but at this point it was mostly because Luke refused to hate back. If Luke hated back then Asch could feel free to hate him.

The, the idiot!

Spinoza was right. He was just a child.

He'd been blaming a child for what Van had done to both of them. The sins of the fathers visited upon the sons.

The replica didn't really want to die. But if that was the only gift it could give Asch, if that was the only way it could make any of it up to him, then it would. It would exhibit that same sickening contentment Spinoza had described with such horror, Asch could see it so clearly already. A child curling up with its parents, like he'd dreamed of after he was kidnapped, finally safe and found and wanted.

But Asch didn't want it. He didn't want it, any of it. He didn't want it to have been born, it had no right to exist!

And _it knew that_. It agreed with him, and the more it gave Asch what he wanted the more frustrated he got with it. He wanted it to fight him so that he could beat it without it just being like the family of a dead original beating their loved one's helpless replica: pointless and cruel. It hadn't done anything, after all. And neither had Luke. He hadn't asked to be born, he hadn't known his entire life was a lie.

Asch felt sick, and seeing that expression the damn thing thought he deserved it, or something utterly stupid like that, and flinched but didn't go away. Didn't back down. He'd fight Asch, oppose him, but only for Asch's sake, and it was… didn't the thing have any spine? So much pain there, so much incomprehension. "I'm not doing you any favors by doing this, dreck. Ask him about the Big Bang."

It didn't understand, Jade did. "What are you…"

"It's already started." He turned away from the, the… He looked at the ever so slightly wide-eyed colonel since he was still someone he could be vicious towards. "If he wants to die in my place so badly then he can. If I'm the one that does it, I'll live. If he does, who's going to stop Van? At least having a replacement will finally start being useful." Replacement. Useful. Those words should be okay to say, no, they should make him feel better. It wasn't theft if it was only a placeholder, there to live his life until he got back to it (but he couldn't go back and live that life, not anymore), it only had a right to exist in his eyes… if it was useful, if it did something to make up for all the trouble it had caused him. If he at least got the satisfaction of having vengeance, of feeling that he had a right to blame it for him being stupid enough to go back to Van.

If it were a thing he could hold it in contempt, if it were a thief he could hate it, if it were none of those things then he'd been, he'd been almost as bad to it as Van had to both of them. Although at least he'd never pretended to care.

He wasn't starting to care, not now!

"Asch, what do you mean?" Natalia. He'd… no, this was why he blamed it. If it were all its fault then he didn't have to bear the guilt.

When he died, when he took what it would offer so freely, then he would know the truth. Know that it had never deserved his hatred, been lost and confused more than he had ever been its entire life, know the pain he'd caused something that did have a heart and could have it broken over and over, and… He almost wanted to say he'd changed his mind. Let it go in his place, he should live long enough to stop Van.

But it wanted him to live. And damn it, he didn't want to die! He'd thought he'd accepted the fact he was doomed, and then it turned out he'd been wrong, Dist had just been a bastard as usual.

"I mean having my replica data extracted is finally starting to kill me, and when that happens…" He didn't want to say it, he didn't want to see her shock and grief at what would happen. The horror that was already there was too much.

"You're dying because of me?" The sheer anguish there!

"Shut up! It had nothing to do with you!" And yet it did, and does. If only the damn thing would just want Asch to die already! What did he have to do to make it hate him? Would nothing work?

"But…"

"Just shut up!" he screamed in frustration, sword drawn and pointed at it.

"Jade, what's going on?" The traitor guardian seemed to have her head on her shoulders, unlike everything else present, unfortunately.

"…"

"It's that bad!" Guy spoke what all those idiots were thinking.

The necromancer adjusted his glasses to buy time.

"Jade!" At least the replica was pleading to him now instead of Asch for an explanation.

Those red eyes weighed him now, and although he'd seen this one on the battlefield before and he was quite competent Asch had never been frightened of him, despite the rumors. The cold calculation had changed to a fierce one when Jade's eyes opened and his hand was removed from his glasses. Asch was a threat to Luke. If killing Asch would have saved Luke instead of doomed him Asch knew that Jade's sheer indignation would have driven him to strike the god-general down here and now, regardless of the consequences or anything, like Luke and Natalia, who got in the way. But there was no way to save Luke from the threat Asch's very existence posed and death would bring about.

And then that passion was locked away, because there was no one to turn it on, no one to kill. Except Van, of course, but Van wasn't here. Their mystic artes could tell you a lot about a person. Jade's feelings were locked inside a cage and anything that trespassed would be destroyed. Anything that angered him enough to venture outside of it would be annihilated.

Killing Asch would kill Luke. If that hadn't been the case, Jade would have acted, here and now, and apologized for the property damage never.

He was jealous. Asch had Natalia, but she loved his replacement just as much, his childhood best friend had left him behind for the replica's sake: there wasn't anyone who would protect him with that fierceness. His parents? His father had planned to send him to his death.

No, there was someone who would. Someone who would no matter what. And they were on borrowed time already.

"How long?" Jade asked. How long you die, one way or another, how long until Luke dies, eaten away from the inside?

Asch hesitated. He needed to get rid of the miasma, find the Key of Lorelei, stop the Planet Storm, kill Van… and he had to hurry. He couldn't and he shouldn't want to give them time. "As soon as I get to the Tower of Rem."

One again there was that call to arms, once again it was reined in by inhuman control. For the world's sake, Jade couldn't beat Asch up, tie him up, and let them have time to say goodbyes and find excuses. No. They had to get it over with.

Asch knew he'd better get to Van before Jade did, or else there wouldn't be anything left to rend apart.

"Colonel…" Even Asch could hear the spy's fuse shortening.

"Do you remember the cheagles we saw in Ortion Cavern? There were two, the original was weaker, and when we returned only the one in the cage labeled replica remained?"

"So Asch really is…" Natalia gasped.

"After we took the cheagle to Sheridan, I interviewed him with Mieu's assistance. He was the original. He remembered slowly growing weaker, dying, and when he woke up he was in the replica's body. I theorized that years ago, but we had never been able to create a perfect isofon so it was never tested. If Asch dies his fonons will transmigrate to Luke's body." Jade did not want to be saying this. That was obvious, even Asch could pick up on it, but the others seemed to regard that tone as a sign the world was coming to an end. Which it had been for a long time, actually. "It's called the Big Bang Effect."

"What will happen to Luke?" Van's sister. Oh, don't tell him she had a crush on the thing! That just made this all so prefect. Like a damn story, written out over two thousand years ago. Damn the Score!

"Luke will most likely…" He couldn't make himself say it. The _Necromancer_ couldn't. The glasses were adjusted again. "If Luke were to go to the Tower of Rem, then Asch most likely wouldn't live very long. In instability damage if the replica is destroyed it's an incredible shock to the system. If Asch were to go, then his personality would transfer to a healthy body, and he would be able to free Lorelei." A healthy body. Jade could not stay this clinical and say Luke's name. "Once this decay has started, there is no way to reverse it. Asch is living on borrowed time, and if the phenomenon were to occur before the miasma is cleared then we would have to wait until after fighting Van to remove it." And in that equation, again, neither of them would live.

Asch could feel it taking a deep breath, and just like after they'd lowered the land the replica was able to open their connection. Of course the idiot didn't know he'd done it. He was just thinking about Asch. And making a resolution.

Normally Asch kept his side open so that he could spy on the thing when he felt like it. When he touched its mind it hurt the thing for some unknown reason. Or perhaps not all that unknown. Hearing Lorelei had hurt because Lorelei was in pain. The replica had hurt because it hurt that Asch hated it. He'd been amused when it tried to contact him without lowering its shields: it locked itself into its own head, but it had raised them for a reason, long before Asch came along. The barriers were there to protect against Lorelei and the pain it caused, they had to be. No wonder the thing hadn't gotten that its headaches were connected to the mental mixing Asch had asked about at the oasis. The replica was long-practiced at staying separate.

Those shields had just been dropped, and Asch almost lost his balance. The feeling!

The thing wasn't sucking him in, although he would have liked to think that. It was just offering, it was just willing to let Asch if he needed it no matter what the cost and Asch's fonons wanted to take him up on it. A body that wasn't decaying, someplace he was welcome (and there was nowhere Asch was welcome but with Natalia, Guy: the thing and its friends), and he wanted it. "Stop it!" He had to use his sword as a cane, the other hand going to his head.

"Tear, first fonic hymn, now!" Jade. Thank goodness.

"No, not on Asch, on Luke!" But the correction came too late, he was already asleep.

When Jade grabbed him and slapped him awake Asch was able to stand, if barely. He didn't know if he could walk but it was moot: Jade had thrown him over his shoulder and was striding our of the cathedral. "You!" The guard blinked at him. "Tell Emperor Peony that it is vitally important that Luke be kept asleep until I return. Understand?"

"Yes sir!" Jade wasn't his superior but he was not someone to argue with.

"Jade, where are you taking him?" Natalia had to run a bit to keep up with the Colonel's rapid strides.

"The Tower of Rem."

"The Tower of…"

"The hell are you thinking!"

"There is no time!" That actually shut them up. Asch was impressed. "Natalia, cast Revive and then Healing Force as soon as we're on the Albiore. Tear, force field. I want him _surrounded_ by seventh fonons, _saturated_ in them, do you understand?"

No, but they'd do it anyway.

"Asch, _focus_. If you die before we get there I swear I will invest my full effort in making your remaining time on Auldrant as miserable as only I can!"

It would have been far more efficient to escape from the monsters they encountered in the tower. Asch, tied to Tokunaga while Anise stood by watched and was reasonably amazed. They were _angry_.

He as well as them had always… They weren't unmotivated, anything but, but they didn't want to be doing this. Asch (and Luke), Guy, and Tear didn't want to believe Van had turned into this, Natalia also wanted this to be all a bad dream, and Jade had that reserve.

That underlying desire to talk instead of fight was gone. They were angry, Van wasn't here, so the things that were would just have to do.

Rage against fate, rage against the Score: Jade was casting Thunder Blade before Dist opened his big mouth.

Anise didn't seem to grasp what had come over the others either. She'd been curtly told by Jade after participating in an early battle that if she was going to perform so poorly she should be the one playing babysitter. Her face had been shocked: she and the Colonel were the only real veterans here, they'd seemed to have some kind of rapport from what he'd seen of the group before, and he'd just said that to her?

Jade had drafted a very binding document en route and sent it back with their pilot with his, Natalia's, and Tear's signatures already added and an letter that Peony, Ingobert and Teodoro had better confirm their representatives' commitments to the replicas in exchange for this sacrifice _or else_. Natalia and Tear, after the revelation and the curt statement that no, there was no way out, had cast and cast while Guy was kept busy making fruit cocktails to ease their weary throats. Anise had played with her dice almost compulsively, for luck, and Jade had stood in front of the cockpit and struck innocent passing monsters and clouds with lightning, supposedly to level up another fon slot chamber for the arte. Although no one had actually dared ask.

Asch had tried to figure out how to build mental shields. He'd never actually needed them. Lorelei had talked to the replica instead of him until Choral Castle and he wasn't the one contact with the replica hurt. He didn't talk to them. They weren't looking at him, except for Natalia, whose eyes he couldn't meet and whose energy was occupied with doing what she could for him.

Asch didn't know who the one Guy called Mary was a replica of. Someone important, but emotions weren't allowed to stop them. Even if he did talk to her while they were setting up. They didn't have time. It was running out, and even if Asch was the one who could feel it and Jade was the one who knew it the rest could tell by them.

And then he did it.

Ten thousand lives were ending: it should have been horrible. Instead it felt natural. Gather them up (the fonons, the people were as dust that got brushed off something you wanted to use), spread them out (only they seemed like extensions of himself now, the fonons did), and do it. It felt like something he knew how to do in the same way he knew how to walk, like he'd done things like this an infinite number of times even though he'd very rarely dared to actually do anything with hyperresonance.

Was this how Lorelei should feel? Instead of being contained in the core.

That was his last thought.


	3. Heart's Blood

And here is where things get into semi-mysticism instead of straight 'what if this happened instead of this.' Concept of 'soul rooms,' places that manifest someone's nature, hijacked from Yu-gi-oh, which I don't own either. I used to write for it, though. They're barely touched on in the anime but there's more about them in the manga. Redecorating someone's soul room, since it is just a symbol used for the mind so people visiting it can understand it and interact with it, will change the personality. Shadi uses this to turn a Professor into a... they mistook him for a zombie, but he was just 'programmed' to attack them: he was alive and capable of thinking, although only to a limited degree.

The Millennium Rod (which should really be sceptre) allows for slightly more conventional pseudo-psychic remote control via messing with memories instead of personality traits. Malik can use it to speak through his puppets by putting in the memory of what to say and how. However, if someone's going to be mind controlled the Key, which Shadi uses, is a lot nastier than the Rod. People's personalities are intact under the influence of the Rod, and another Millennium Item can wake them back up (although possibly it's only the Puzzle that can do this, because the different items have different powers), and possibly cultist deprogramming could manage too, over some years. The only cure for the Key is for it to touch the victim. There's no 'true self' left in there_ to_ wake up until their personality is reassembled. It's much, much nastier than a mind crush, which destroys the soul room/personality but frees the 'soul' up to rebuild. The 'soul' of a victim of the Key is set into a mental role by it and breaking out isn't possible.

In other words, as Asch 'redecorates' Luke's room here, these are Luke's personality traits that he would be erasing and replacing with his own traits until there's nothing left of Luke. I've been hanging out with the people on playthedamncard, the livejournal Yu-gi-oh crack/discussion community too much, and going back and reading this I thought I might not have explained the ground rules of this enough. What exactly messing with a soul room does isn't even known by most people in the fandom (cough the dub was worse than One Piece's cough), and this was in the early manga, which isn't covered in the anime and was a lot more open about establishing/foreshadowing the fact that the Millennium Items are about as black as magic can get.

Seeing someone's room tells you everything you need to know about their personality. This is why the anime included an episode based on the part of the early manga where Shadi is trying to figure out the 'other Yugi' but can't do it because his soul room is hidden within the Millennium Puzzle's maze. Given that the biggest problem between Asch and Luke is that they don't understand each other and therefore Luke's attempts to make up for what he did to Asch rub Asch the wrong way, I think Asch's change in perception of Luke that started in the last chapter should, in fact, be finalized here.

Also, a sword is a traditional symbol of air. Naming it a key when air is the element that unbinds just rubs it in. The seventh fonon is made up of the other six plus memory particles, so I think giving it additional forms is reasonable. At least for AU.

-

It was warm, and soft. Those were just metaphors, but the sensation was that everything was perfect for relaxing, he'd done everything he needed to and had the right to relax, and he was being cared for. All was well with the world and he was pleasantly drowsy.

Except that when he metaphorically tried to spread out and wiggle around to get even more comfortable there was a sensation akin to his foot hitting a rock and not only getting bruised but burned by it.

Then he realized what was going on.

The replica, _Luke_, was there. _Was_ the warmth, the rightness, the reassurance. He held him and was held by him and he was so warm: he needed that warmth, he'd lacked it for so long. He drank it down and it soothed a parched throat and parched heart, but Luke, oh, sad and tormented Luke, was not an inexhaustible fountain.

He opened his eyes and knew this place was a metaphor. He knew what it meant, this place of such significance to Luke, in ways only Luke should. This was where Luke felt safest.

The room they were in had been smashed. Asch knew it was the remnants of Luke's room, the one that had been his long ago. The roof was gone, shattered glass everywhere, cruel mirrors and bloodstained cruel reminders. Akzeriuth, Akzeriuth had done this, the knowledge that he wasn't who he thought he was and he could not let himself be blinded, had to remember, couldn't stay in a safe shell, couldn't be, couldn't be a solid self when not changing had led to that.

The bed was Tear's, where he'd been kept asleep and then woken up.

Out beyond the walls was the miasma, but at least it didn't come in here. That was some comfort. He didn't know what the differently colored arced ribbons of light were that kept it out. The instant he thought that he knew that they were what Luke saw around him during the headaches. His shields, his protection from the pain.

The miasma's poisonous light was dispelled by a fonstone bedside lamp in the form of a sun. Guy. There were selenias scattered among the shards of glass: no, the shards of glass were sprouting into selenias, he saw as he sat up and leaned down to look. He wouldn't want to trust his feet to even the mostly-cleared path to the doorway.

He'd bashed his foot against what he knew was the Jewel of Lorelei and kicked it onto the floor. The contamination effect? It figured.

A pile of arte books, some still open, a recipe book with notes all through the margins being held open by Luke's diary and a kitchen knife.

Framed portraits over the bed. Father's was faded, Mother's frame had been carefully polished, the largest had been turned to face the wall. A new one was covered, because while Jade was being Luke's guide now he refused to be a parent and Luke wouldn't call him that, wouldn't let himself rely on someone as he had Van. And yet he was there, a presence that watched from hiding, as Tear was a presence that lit now, the way Guy always had.

Where was Anise?

Oh, Ion.

A doll, a porcelain doll, luminous and broken and pieced back together so that Ion could be treasured here instead of just mourned. Replica Ion, but to Luke there had only been one Ion, the one he had found in Cheagle Woods. Those weren't Asch's memories and feelings. The doll rested on a tokunaga, because Anise also protected Ion's memory. The tokunaga itself was stained, but patched together and darned. Luke knew what it was to betray, to fail, for what seemed like vital reasons and have to live with it.

Mieu?

The blanket Asch had pushed off himself to sit up was the color and texture of Mieu's fur.

The cup of water next to Guy's lamp was Natalia. He thirsted for it but he wouldn't take it.

He felt the urge to clean Father's portrait and toss Van's outside into the miasma and what right did Jade have to be counted among his parents?

Luke's, perhaps. Jade had invented fomicry. And Van had created Luke. Family was family, like it or not.

And this was Luke's mind. He did not have the right to redecorate, even if his fingers itched to. This place just wasn't him. But what was him?

There was nothing of himself here but himself. He'd already consumed that, he knew. Luke's care for him, desire to have him in his life despite everything, desire to give back since he'd unknowingly taken… Luke still slept. Asch had left looking at him for last.

Lost Child.

That was what Luke was. He'd thought he was a Duke's Son: that Luke was almost dead. The Frightful One that couldn't stand the idea of killing another person was buried. The Ambassador still did his work, mending. The Replica Model still sought a place. The Passage Commander had done so much to be proud of yet not enough. He'd earned that name of Sword of Swords at the coliseum (as the Vagabond Son he could get them all in for free, and it was good practice). He'd been a Financial Investor because they needed a memorial and what else did he have to save it for? He'd had moments of fun, and being called a champion Barrel Breaker was something that mattered to him, something untainted, and did he really think being a Towel Boy so the sweat didn't get in his eyes in the baths was practical enough to put up with looking so stupid? He'd been called a decent Cook and it was so strange that that was as important an achievement as his one at the coliseum.

And yet he was, more than all those, a Lost Child.

What was Asch? He was still technically a God-General, and he'd always been a Loving Son although that wasn't a title he could really claim, given how the attempt to reunite them had gone. He wasn't the Light of the Sacred Flame anymore, that was certain. That was a name he could never reclaim, no matter how Van tried to make him be that.

He wanted to hold him. He wanted to take him into himself, and fix this broken place into a place for them, reclaim what had been lost for his own and_ live_.

Luke would be content with that. The Lost Child longed to be found, to be recognized, to be understood and loved.

But if that happened Luke would no longer exist to be content.

Thank goodness that he was asleep, although looking so pale, so thin and drained wasn't a good thing. He'd seen Luke's mind. He understood him now. Did someone who had earned the name the Bloody have the right to sacrifice an innocent to live? Asch didn't really want to live, not at the most basic level. That was what had killed him, at the root. If he'd been determined to hold his fonons together the damage woudn't have been able to pile up like that. He wasn't willing to live at such a cost, not anymore, the same epiphany the other originals had felt, perhaps. He'd built up this image of Luke as a theif, as a weakling, as... He knew better now, and he couldn't retreat to that ignorance and he could no longer want Luke dead and gone. Asch wanted to heal him, to give to him without overwhelming him, but what did he have to give but himself, and to do that would kill him.

The Jewel.

The Jewel had the power to disperse fonons.

It burned him through his gloves just as it had through his boots: they were just parts of him here, after all. No, they were shields. He took off his gloves and the Jewel stopped trying to burn through to him.

Ah.

The Sword gathered. The Jewel released. He'd thought perhaps he could use it to dissolve himself away, give his fonons to Luke as Luke had done for him, but the sword he carried was _the _Sword. He must have brought it with him.

He joined the two and knew that this manifestation of Lorelei had six forms, as the seventh fonon was made up of the other six in harmony and the planet's memory. Lorelei had sent them the Key, the form most suited to freeing it. He wanted the fourth form right now.

The Sword became the Goblet and the Jewel the Elixir that filled it, gatherer of power and giver of it.

He brought the Chalice back to Luke's bed and sat down on it, putting the Chalice on the table for now. "Luke?"

Those weary eyes cracked open. "Mmm?" Luke had so much power: they both did. That wasn't the problem. That wasn't what they had starved for. They'd both needed comfort and since Asch wouldn't accept Luke's and Luke received precious little (Asch none) there hadn't been enough for either of them. If it were just fonons they could have lived forever.

And yet Luke smiled, eyes closing again when Asch didn't reply, just glad that he was here.

Asch pulled him up into his arms, ignoring the noise of protest. Luke was tired and wanted to rest, but Asch would not permit this to be his deathbed. When Luke (so cold!) was propped up against him he picked up the Chalice again and held Luke's head so that he could hold the Chalice to his lips.

Being held like something precious, the way the slumbering Luke had held him, breathed a bit of new life into him: he was able to open those eyes fully, in wonder.

Asch could still feel blood trickling down his chest, from a wound in Luke's back that had never healed. At least he wasn't the one who had stabbed him through the heart. He would wash it with the Chalice, and bandage it, and maybe that would let it start to heal. He bore his own, although there was little blood left for it to shed.

They'd held out so long: most of the blood that flowed through him had been Luke's even before they'd met again. Akzeriuth. That was when Asch had started to weaken and die. Luke had noticed he wasn't as strong as he should be in Ortion Cavern. That was when Luke had received this wound and no longer had enough to sustain them both, no matter what Guy and Natalia gave or he earned from Tear.

"Drink up." He pressed the Chalice to those dry lips, and Luke didn't dare to question this kindness in case it vanished. His mouth opened a crack: Asch tilted it enough for a few drops to pour in.

Only those few drops and Luke gasped, head arching back as they trickled down his throat. When his eyes opened again there was light in them, the green alive and already showing a few flecks of the gold their eyes should be in this place. Those eyes looked at Asch in wonder, in amazement, in gratitude, in love. Asch had given him this? Asch had… Asch found him worthy of saving?

"Hurry up and drink, Luke. I'm thirsty too."

Now Luke could hold his own head up and his hands joined Asch's in holding the Chalice as Luke move it to his lips again, eager and hungry. He gulped it down greedily, and Asch could feel his skin warm, his color return, the skin around the wound grow less feverish, and light begin to seep though the rims of those eyelids, closed in utter rapture.

The room grew lighter as selenias grew and bloomed. Not all of the broken glass changed, but the leaves and roots hopefully would provide enough protection that it would only cut Luke rarely. The sun flared, flared again and stayed at that brightness, now there was enough to power the fonstone properly. There started to be more arcs of light, although not a rainbow. "The miasma's gone," Asch told him, and the purple dimmed although perhaps it wouldn't go away until the glass was gone, the wound healed over and Akzeriuth no longer a source of nightmares. Luke would have the time now.

He was thirsty and it seemed so natural here. He and Luke were, in some strange way, not so much one but joined at the hip: Luke's lifeblood was his own and now that Luke could drink his fill it didn't seem creepy to nose the hair out of the way and bite down except in the academic sense. Of course he wouldn't do this in the real world: it would hurt Luke there and thus wouldn't accomplish what he was so very willing to do it for.

Luke moaned, although Asch wasn't sure he could do that while drinking. Well, in the real world Luke would have had to come up for air by now instead of just kept drinking.

The elixir was much better Luke-flavored. He might just keep drinking this way until he was full. And knowing that Asch not only wanted to heal him but wanted his love? Asch hadn't even noticed until now that Luke's heart wasn't beating. Luke's starting kick-started his own. Was it strange that they could only love themselves if someone else loved them? Asch thought everyone was that way, really.

He wasn't sure how much time passed while they sat there, just like that, but eventually they didn't need the Elixir anymore and Luke put it down. Also ceasing to drink, Asch gently poked Luke for his attention. "Take off your shirt and jacket."

What?

"Your wound."

His wound? Asch hadn't cared before. Everyone had said he shouldn't think about it or mourn, he had things he needed to do and they were more important than his pain. Idiots. And Asch counted himself in that number. They'd expected him to do all that while bleeding to death?

Of course, if Luke had gotten proper care Asch wouldn't have gotten sick and they wouldn't be here. "I'll bandage it," Asch explained, "And you can tell me what's going on."

Luke nodded and started taking off his clothes. The blood didn't show on them. It rarely had, it had burst out sometimes but under the circumstances Luke was good at not letting it… except for the month after they'd thought Van was dead, when Luke hadn't had anything to distract himself with, no reason to force aside the pain, no one to grab him and drag him out of it. "It's nighttime right now. It's been two days since they got back and let me wake up. I told them that you were here and would be safe. You were warm."

Only because Luke had been so cold.

"Jade left, with Anise, Guy, Tear, and the Dark Wings. They're looking for the Jewel of Lorelei. We should let them know we have it, and the Sword. They thought it was caught up in the hyperresonance that destroyed the miasma. I think Jade was hoping the Jewel could force you out of me." Luke was_ not_ happy that Jade had even contemplated that. Healthy gold eyes flared, then subsided.

"Don't blame him for wanting to save you," Asch chided him.

At Asch's expense?

"I don't want you to die for me anymore than you want me to die for you," Asch told him, reaching for the Chalice and pouring a little into his hand, enough to get started, at least. He'd have to clean the caked blood away before he could get at the actual wound.

Asch, Asch felt that way?

"You shouldn't need to ask." Calling him dreck and replica, that was wrong. But he was still such an idiot sometimes. Such a child. He motioned for Luke to lie down on his stomach so he could start by drizzling the elixir over the wound. Rubbing at it made Luke shiver, and Asch found himself bending down to kiss his shoulder in apology. So very natural. How it should be.

"Natalia stayed to do what she could." Ah, so that was why the water was fresh and clean even though the light had been dim and the selenias slightly wilted. "She's sitting by our bedside." Didn't Asch want to go comfort her?

"Is she bleeding?"

"…No."

"Then she can wait." That was what had frustrated him so much. Luke was nowhere on Luke's priority list. Holding Asch's… other self? Anyway, treating himself like that was treating Asch like that.

Of course, had Asch treated himself any better?

They were both idiots. Luke was less idiotic. Of course, Luke thought Asch was the better one. They were both idiots. Levels of idiocy were pointless to think about. They were going to stop being idiots and that was that.

He'd reached the swollen skin now, and drizzled elixir again to cool it. Then he took the chalice, willed into the key again, and cut off a lock of his hair. There wasn't much else that would serve as a bandage in this place, at least not well enough. Part of him that it was, it was easy to make it part of Luke, something that would stay. And perhaps it was the same sort of funerary offering to his old self that Luke had made after Akzeriuth. The fool that had destroyed the city had died then. The fool that had let this happen to the two of them was also dead and buried.

When he was done Luke was the one to push him down. "Your turn."

This was going to hurt, but he needed it. He nodded and removed his own clothing, his own mental armor. Perhaps he should take all of it off: there was no one to protect themselves from here except each other, and to do that was to starve themselves. But while it felt right the blood drinking (he licked his lips at the thought) was bad enough. There was no shame in it, but what if they started acting like this outside?

"Don't you think that's enough?" Luke was almost soaking it in elixir. Not that it didn't feel wonderful against the pain, but taking the pain out, touching it, would hurt no matter what he did.

Luke hated to hurt him, but he wasn't the frightful one anymore. Asch needed him to do this. So he turned the chalice into the key and opened the wound. Asch hissed as Luke reverted it into the chalice and did his best to clean out the infection, all the pain and anger that had festered inside until he'd been in delirium with it. In the end Luke had to suck much of it out, spitting out the poison until the blood started to flow clean. "Ugh." Disgusting. Luke drank a bit to get the last of that taste out of his mouth.

"I agree." It was disgusting. Asch should know, he'd been the one infected by it.

Luke filled the cavity with his own blood, not the elixir, and held it closed until the blood sealed it. "Don't worry, I have enough." Luke knew Asch wouldn't let him push himself.

"Alright." They got under the blankets and curled up together to sleep until morning. Asch nuzzled Luke and debated taking off their pants: he wanted closer, Efreet take it. Luke smiled against his shoulder and bit down. Asch followed. He drank from Luke, Luke from him, a circle, an oroborous. As long as they gave to the other the other would have enough to sate them.


	4. Sacred Flames

And it looks like the last chapter's weirdness lost me my readers. Ah well.

-

In the morning they didn't want to part, even though they knew they could speak and see each other. Luke held the key for a long moment before thanking it and handing it to him. After all, the key was also one of them, a manifestation of Lorelei. Kin. That was why it had tried to fill Luke's near-empty heart.

The key let Asch out the door and into the real world.

Natalia was still asleep in a chair, head pillowed on her arms that were propped on the bed. It looked horribly uncomfortable.

Asch realized that he'd materialized as he'd been when he left and wanted his clothes back. They complied.

Luke yawned a moment after he awoke. It wasn't loud enough to wake Natalia, although she twitched a bit. "Natalia." Asch put a hand on her shoulder and moved it gently.

"'m not leaving, Jade…" Natalia was always cute when she was half-asleep.

"I'm not Jade, Natalia. Wake up."

"Luke." Oh, poor Luke.

"I'm not Luke either."

She'd never heard Asch's voice so gentle. Perhaps that was an effect of… Natalia opened her eyes and sat up, instantly awake. "Asch?" She'd watched him fall apart in front of her, she was happy, so happy he was alive, but the cost was horrific.

"I'm here, and so is he." Luke leaned over his shoulder and waved. A little cheeky, but it worked: she smiled with laughter as well as just happiness, and surged up to embrace them both.

"Luke, Asch!"

He found that he didn't even care she'd said Luke's name first. It was Luke that she'd thought she was losing, after all.

"Should we go find the others and tell them they can stop worrying?" Luke asked. "We're alive, we have the key…" Life was good.

It was, wasn't it.

"We have the Albiore III, we could catch up with them in it." Natalia let them go, started looking around trying to figure out where to start with getting them ready to go. Normally she was more organized than this, but how overwhelming!

"Don't need it," Luke informed her cheerfully, and took their hands.

Perfect hyperresonance. As natural as breathing to Lorelei and its avatars. Once they understood, at least. Luke had even arranged to arrive posed in a chair at the rear of the cockpit, while Asch and Natalia were standing as they had when they left. "Hey, guys!"

Luke's tendency to mope meant that when he was like this something significant was happening. It worked better than anything Asch could have thought of to cut through the time spent reassuring them.

"Luke!" The word was laden with six different varieties of joy and shock, from the four companions, the pet, and the pilot.

Anise got there first, Guy second, Tear third. If Anise hadn't jumped into his lap and weighed him down Guy would probably have picked him up and tried to spin him around in the confines of the cockpit. Asch wondered what would happen when Guy realized he was in a group hug with two women.

Jade was more restrained (And Noelle was occupied) and hung back, looking from Luke to Asch and back with an expression that said, "This makes no sense but I'm going to go with it. At least until the others have backed off and I can pin you down until it makes sense and I know whether or not this state of affairs will persist."

He wasn't going to rejoice, despite Luke's reassuring approach, until he was certain there was reason to rejoice. They should not both be here, alive. Asch drew the completed Key of Lorelei and showed it to him.

Jade wasn't sure how the Key had accomplished this, but at least there _was _a reason. Natalia was practically vibrating with joy at this miracle: he'd known he wouldn't get an explanation from her.

Meanwhile, from the pile of children (although Guy was older than Asch):

"Luke, you're alive!"

"You idiot, don't ever do that again!"

"I'm sorry Master, Jade said if I didn't come along so he could use the ring he'd flay me alive and have me made into earmuffs!"

"This had better be for real!"

Soon after meeting Guy again Asch had thought he was gullible as ever until Guy had pointed out that he didn't trust Asch. Which was very reasonable, under the circumstances. It was appropriate that he and Jade were the ones aware of the "if it's too good to be true, it probably is," maxim no matter how much Guy wanted Luke to live.

Wait, _what_? Guy had joined the household to kill him and make his father suffer for killing his family, including his sister Mary, in the Hod war? His other childhood best friend had been secretly planning to murder him and had been serious enough about it that a curse slot had made him attack Luke? No, Van had _not _told him!

"Ahem. Asch, if you have a heart attack so soon after returning our comic relief to us I will be very put out." Jade was unamused, and would probably try to bring him back to life so that he could kill him again if he died, provided Luke could survive it as he had this time.

"Wait, Asch is…" Guy noticed who he was surrounded by. "Aaaah!" He sprang backwards hard enough to hit the bulkhead with a painful-sounding thump.

Guy hadn't noticed he was alive? Was Guy going to try to remedy that? Yes, Luke was right, this was Guy and Guy wasn't that sort of person, but they'd both thought the same thing about Van, and Van was Guy's childhood friend… "Asch, breathe!" Luke hit him on the back since he wouldn't be able to get out of the chair soon enough to stand up and slap him.

"Take deep breaths." The Necromancer was wearing his doctor hat again. "Do you know what's causing this?"

A murderer had been in his home all those years when Van had promised him his family was safe! "Stupid stupid stupid…" Why had he ever trusted Van!

Jade was willing and able to slap him. It didn't help much. He would have done it, he would have done it if it hadn't been for Luke!

Luke, who had finally managed to get the two girls off him. Asch felt his other half's arms wrap around him from behind, shielding the back he hadn't known there was a dagger pressed against because Luke had turned it to their side. He let his eyes close and focused on taking deep breaths.

"Guy, what did you do?" Natalia had picked up that Asch had been staring at Guy.

"Nothing!"

"That's right, he didn't do anything. It's okay, Asch." Luke had his lips pressed against Asch's neck, near his ear, and Asch wanted him to bite down, a welcome distraction, but this wasn't the place for it and Luke wouldn't hurt him. He much preferred even Luke's broken heart to the outside world, he was forced to admit. The hold made him feel boneless, it was so comforting and relaxing.

"Ah, so I was correct in thinking that Van had kept Guy's motives in reserve as a trump card." The Necromancer was too damn perceptive for anyone's good. "But why did you realize it right then?"

"He didn't consume me, at least not all that much, but we're connected now. He thought about how Guy was so happy that I was alive and then that sort of triggered what I know about Guy, all of a sudden. You were his friend too, Guy, and after Master Van turned out to be against us all along… he just sort of panicked. He didn't want to think that you were like him, but knowing that you'd been there all along when Van promised Mother and Father would be left alone if Asch came with him… It brought up memories of that, and feeling betrayed, and…" Poor Asch. Luke butterfly kissed the side of his neck. "Don't worry, he doesn't hate you. It was just a shock."

"I would imagine." The necro-Jade was still checking Asch's pulse. "He calmed down amazingly quickly."

"It's because we're connected." Since Asch was alright now Luke disengaged and, taking a deep breath, Asch opened his eyes only to have them caught by Jade's.

"Am I correct in assuming that your eyes are the equivalent of my own fonic sight, only with the seventh fonon instead of the fifth?"

"Our eyes?" Luke looked at Asch. "Oh, they are glowing gold. I think they're supposed to do that."

"Is it related to what allowed you to survive?"

"Well, I think they started doing this when we," how to put it without discussing things that were private and sounded creepy? "We, or Asch realized that we could use the key to get stronger so we didn't have to… You were going to use the Jewel to take yourself apart and give me your fonons?!" Now it was Luke's turn for a sudden shocking realization.

"I_ said_ I don't want you to die for me anymore than you want me to die for you."

"But…!"

"It doesn't matter anymore, so stop worrying about it!"

Luke subsided only because he knew how much Asch couldn't stand to even think about it. He hugged him instead. Asch let him, they both needed it.

"How touching and yet typical," Jade murmured. The others were somewhat waiting in the wings: Luke knew they were glad he was back and now they were giving Jade room to figure out what was going on so they could get an explanation. He hated explaining things, so Luke had better hurry up and do it himself instead of forcing Jade to piece it together. "Would you kindly condescend to explain yourselves?"

"This idiot," that was Tear's pet name for him, it didn't hurt his feelings. "Had the Jewel inside him all along. I was so weak I don't think I would have woken up before the end if I hadn't kicked it by accident. That woke me up, I realized what was going on, it occurred to me to use the Jewel, but when I held it… It was like at the Tower. I knew what I was doing. There was another way: combine the Sword and the Jewel into the Key, convert it into the Chalice, and use that to… it wasn't just fonons. Our fonons were dissipating because they didn't want to stay together enough to handle what we were putting them through. Sort of like Ion, only not exactly. So we needed fonons that held our pattern," that was why just pouring seventh fonons into a replica or original would only do a small amount of good. "That wanted us not to disappear. I don't think we took enough to make much of a dent in the power Van has access to, though. He can only channel a bit and Lorelei has a _lot _more than he can handle."

"Ah! You're Lorelei's isofons, so it was able to sustain you." That explained it, so Jade could believe it now. "What is the Chalice?"

"This," the Key, at the moment, "has six modes, one for each of the other six fonons that combine with memory particles to form the seventh fonon. It has a seventh mode, but it's not accessible. They're the symbols for each of the fonons: the Key is the third fonon mode and it's specialized for binding and unbinding. The Scepter would have been better for large-scale artes like at the Tower, but I didn't know about that then. The Chalice is the fourth fonon mode, and, well, the fourth fonic hymn is Revitalize." The hymns corresponded to the modes: they had been designed to echo the multi-part nature of the fonon.

"Why isn't the seventh fonon's mode accessible?"

"Because he doesn't want to wake up," Luke explained sadly.

"You mean Lorelei is still sealed in the Key? But I thought he was trapped in Van." Tear, Yulia's descendant, knew the myths about the Key. Supposedly, Lorelei's spirit had entered it as part of the pact with Yulia and empowered it.

"That's kind of complicated." Luke reached for words.

Asch supplied them. "A fonon sentience is a collection of that fonon in pure form with a mind." Mix, oh, third fonons in with second and the result would have its own frequency instead of be a vessel for Gnome. Asch himself contained all seven fonons, but the ratio between the first six was correct so he could channel Lorelei's power (the light given off by the sacred flame) although he wasn't Lorelei per se. He and Luke were separate, or mostly separate, people that were just alike enough to flow together, like normal isofonic originals and replicas. Luke and Lorelei weren't normal. "The Key is the previous Scion of Lorelei."

It was one thing to think of Lorelei, the seventh fonon, entering an object in an ancient and semi-holy myth. It was another to think of Luke being turned into a sword and used to hit things.

"Really?" Jade looked at it speculatively.

"He's not going to wake up. The Score went horribly wrong. He wouldn't wake up for the end of the world, not after whatever happened the time he saved it." Luke shivered. There were downsides to being able to use their power over memory. "People don't make decisions randomly. They base them on their experience, and their personalities are shaped by that experience. If you know the starting point then you can predict what people will do. That's the score. It's a prediction of what would happen given everything _including_ the score itself. A self-fulfilling prophecy."

Asch continued for him. "And the seventh fonon, which is time just as much as sound, is just another fonon. It's all one thing, the same as the sea. The future is exactly as set as the past and present, because they're all happening at once." Or that worked as a metaphor.

"Or a river, but there are eddies, you can go up and down on it, and eventually the water that went to the ocean goes back to the top of the river? Lorelei can let itself be carried along as a, a personality, but itself is different." Luke understood it more fundamentally than he did, and that ironically made it harder to bridge the gap between the human viewpoint and the fonon's. Asch was working from the human viewpoint trying to understand the other: Luke knew both in their own context and didn't need to think in metaphors to understand it. He had to deliberately get things wrong to explain it to them, and that was counterintuitive.

"That's all very interesting and I'll interrogate you about it at a later date, but are you up to using your hyperresonances?"

Luke nodded, Asch as well.

"Excellent. Noelle, head for the Absorption Gate."

"We're shutting down the Planet Storm?" Luke asked, to confirm.

"It appears that Asch wasn't the only one Dist neglected to inform about the Big Bang Effect. After you died we were assaulted by a rather angry Sync. Van still appears to be under the impression that you are the one he wants, Asch." Jade caught on quickly, Luke knew. "When the original Ion died it was rather trying for all the replicas even though none were perfect isofons. He believes, or was led to believe, that Luke would be unconscious for the next several weeks and might go insane."

"You could have filled us in on that before! We thought you were serious." The memory still upset Guy.

"Really, you should know better by now than to take me seriously. Where was I? I managed to get the others to let Sync live by saying we needed to retreat and find the Jewel quickly to have any hope of saving Luke, which in fact was correct. I have no doubt he spread the word that you were useless. My, that boy makes you at your most masochistic look like your original self, Luke." Which original self? "In any case, without either of you and without the key, we lose. If we head to the Absorption Gate now we could perhaps be in and out before they're even aware we have any reason to go there."


	5. Childrens' Crusade

Short chapter, but there's a pretty major section/narrative style switch right after this that I thought needed its own chapter.

-

There was an Oracle ship there.

That rage was gone, subsumed with relief. Yet that relief had the same effect of removing the hesitation. Against all odds, Luke and Asch were here, and alive, and fine, and happier than they had ever been. It was going to be okay. Testing their new capabilities turned into a free-for-all of showing off everyone's best techniques and combos. As in the arena, it wasn't serious anymore, it wasn't deadly, and taking away that dread was like removing a physical weight from their shoulders.

A warp away from the passage ring Luke paused, not activating it. "He's coming."

"You're sure?" Asch really couldn't pick out much in all this static. They were at the Absorption Gate, receiver of the Planet Storm. It was amazing that the air wasn't white-gold. Probably some Dawn Age fontech was involved.

"A descendant of Yulia containing a manifestation of Lorelei?" Luke would have asked how could anyone possibly miss that, but he knew that Asch genuinely couldn't sense it and, after all, he wouldn't have been able to before knowing how to look. "And there's… Sync, two Syncs? No, another Ion replica. They're below: Van's coming up from the core. Why here and not the Radiation Gate? It's against the current." Then Luke realized. "Oh, he probably tried that and got swept along with the current. Birds that are trying to fly take off against the wind. It's more work but it's easier to control and he doesn't have much control." Silence for a moment. "Mohs, too. And Largo, Legretta. I can't sense them but I asked the other Ion replica. He didn't know their names but they're recognizable from the descriptions. He's only a couple months old." Poor baby. "Van promised he'd bring a piece of the seventh fonstone."

Anise growled. "That bastard Mohs!" Would he make this Ion read it until he died too?

Asch counted. They had seven combatants. Fighting in a group of more than four was very risky when fonic artes were involved. It made it hard to focus on keeping the fonons from affecting your own side.

"Let's see, unless something makes him speed up, like sensing us would have if I weren't blocking that, we've got twenty minutes until Van gets here."

"Mohs would most likely want to retreat with his prize if we arrived after that Seventh Fonstone did." The idea of splitting the party had also occurred to Jade, then.

"Dibs on the group that gets to kick his ass!" Anise proclaimed. And rescue the nameless Ion replica.

"Luke and I will be going down. We need to free Lorelei and keep Van pinned down so he wouldn't interfere with what you guys will be doing." Luke nodded, agreeing with Asch's plan.

"If Mohs is up here and Van's staying down there, what about Sync, Largo, and Legretta?" Guy was cautious. Any one of them might present a problem: fighting the three of them and a stronger Van at the same time wasn't something he wanted the two of them to be stuck with.

"As for Sync… Guy, get over here and let me see your arm." Luke beckoned him over.

"The curse slot? Ion removed it, right?" Guy did as instructed.

"Yeah, but your arm's seventh fonons remember its seventh fonons, and they remember Sync, which means I can reassemble them and stick them on him." It was clever and it was payback: Luke was proud of himself.

Guy couldn't say no to any of that.

"Okay…" And Luke's face turned from pride to sadness. "He'll be easy to control. He wanted someone to protect him, he wanted to fight back. One nudge and he'd attack Van, but what he really wants to do, a whole lot more than you wanted to kill me, is protect the other replica. Guy, you'll have to stay here so it keeps working, but that would give you two more party members, Anise."

"Fantastic!" She grinned. "Okay, we need a healer. Dibs on Tear!"

Tear and Natalia looked at each other. "What do you think Largo is likely to do?"

"If we go down before Van arrives, he should stand his ground and fight along with Legretta." Jade looked at Asch, the former god-general for confirmation. "But then, Mohs just might join in to protect his investment."

"Then I would like to go with Luke and Asch," Natalia decided. They were her friends first, and her cousins as well. "Perhaps when Van arrives we could switch places, Tear? Your new mystic arte would be more useful, and he is your brother." As Largo was her father.

Major Legretta had been Tear's teacher, but she nodded with that soldierly resolve she cultivated so assiduously.

"And so that leaves me to go with our royal family." Jade sighed. "I feel like the last child to be picked when choosing teams. Perhaps I need to remind you of my genius in combat."

"How should we approach this to get Mohs to retreat up here?"

"Hmm. They know we left you three," Luke, Natalia, and by extension Asch, "in Baticul. If you two were to appear or wake up, you would come here right away, of course. But we need to make enough of a show of force that Mohs would retreat to save his skin. Luke, or Guy, could you make Sync grab the little Ion and retreat up here? Mohs would probably follow to recover his score reader, as well, and then Guy, Anise, and Tear would fight him."

"Easy." Luke nodded. "He wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to go. If Anise headed up first that would work even better. He 'knows' she protects Ions." Or wants to, at least. "Does that sound good to everyone?" There weren't any objections. "Okay, let's go."


	6. Heart & Soul

Experimental bit. I wanted to do some stuff with Luke adjusting to this, and he's also pretty uncomfortable with the whole curse slot concept. It's a tactical necessity/cool new power thing, but he was still guilt-tripping and insisted on doing it this way.

The way they're communicating is essentially Luke talking and 'reading/remembering' Sync's resulting thoughts and feelings. Sync's responses really would be way too… this section was tricky enough to do as it is, I didn't want to do a feeling/fragment/jumble style for half of it. So, this is Luke talking to Sync, and you can get at the overall tone of Sync's reactions from how Luke restates them, sort of translating from reaction to thought. It's not just a cheap way to summarize, it's also Luke figuring out what precise degrees of rage and triggered memories and yadda yadda yadda mean in terms someone who still mostly thinks like a human can understand. Our thoughts are a lot more complex than we think they are: we mostly just access the 'user interface' and know how to adjust for the quirks. It's the difference between using Windows and trying to figure out a different operating system from looking at the programming code. Luke isn't quite up to telepathy yet. The verbal center is a very small portion of what's going on in the brain.

-

Sync… You were born because the score said that Ion would die. They said that you were worthless because you were not spoken of in it. They tried to destroy you because of that. Mohs wanted the 'success' dead as well because he was a threat to Moh's view of the score.

The score says what will happen given what is within the world. But replicas are brought from outside the world, pieces of time and memory that intrude. A drop of water in a pond has already taken its place and can only move as the other drops move it. A drop that falls from the heavens may fall where it may, may create ripples until every other drop is shaken by its presence. You were born because of the Score, but you were born free of it. If only you'd known, if only I'd known the power we had. Those bound by the Score thought we were powerless because we were outside of it and tried to bind us up in it, use us to fulfill it. But it was because we had no destinies, no purposes, that we had value. They created us because they lacked the power they hated us for. Mohs saw us as at threat, I think Van's jealous. He says we're nothing and then he talks about an entire world of people like us as the greatest thing that could ever be, the purpose of his life.

You wanted to reject the score, break the bonds it had on you but it never bound you until you made it your purpose in life. You let yourself become chained to it because you hated it. That hate was what bound you, that sadness.

You don't need to chain yourself to be free. You are free. So is everyone else, if they were smart enough to realize it. The order views the Closed Score as a threat because if people knew their fates they would know how to fight them, wouldn't buy the lie of prosperity and would overthrow the Score simply by turning their backs on it.

But everyone else is born bound. You weren't.

I'm sorry that I'm binding you now. It's not fair. I say that I'm not controlling you while I am: that's not a really good reason to believe me. But this is what you want to do, isn't it? Not let Mohs do what he wants to someone like you in service of some greater plan, but refuse to let what happened to you happen. Refuse to let someone be used. Strike back. Van, what he's doing, it's in the Score, because it is what would happen given the Score. Of course you're angry, of course you don't want to be bound by it. Of course he's willing to do anything to destroy it. I'm Lorelei, kind of, and the Score tried to kill _me_. The Score is what people would do given the Score, given those chains, and chains are horrible things.

I hate that people follow the Score. I hate what happened to you, and Akzeriuth, and Ion dying right there in front of me and I was helpless to prevent it… If I'd known about Akzeriuth I could have stopped it. If I'd known about Anise's parents, if I'd known what I was, I could have. But I didn't know. The best way to destroy the Score would be to open the Closed Score. Don't go to the Rugnica Plains or you'll die! Don't go to… I'm sorry, your life was worse than mine, and I'm thinking too much about that…

I hate that it's all my fault, and I didn't know. Well, I know now, and I'm not going to let it happen. I'm not going to let you die on Eldrant. Yes, you are outside the Score, but… You know how if you just put a pot on it takes so long to boil, but if you cover it and add salt it's faster? If you don't have any salt then you'd think it would take longer to make the meal. If you know you have salt, then you'd make a different prediction. It's sort of like that. The Score didn't know you, or me. I know you, and me, so I know what we would have done if Asch hadn't woken me up like this. It was actually some replicas that caused that deviation, too.

It's sad that 'don't do this or you'll die!' turned into 'make sure they die so we can have prosperity,' isn't it?' I think people like knowing what's going to happen even if it's something terrible. At least you can plan for it. Not knowing anything is scary. Like when I saw Asch, and if I was a replica… I threw up. It was just so scary, that there was something that huge that I didn't know, and what if it was something bad, and if I didn't even know who I was… I don't think there's anything scarier than that. Than not having anything to hold on to. Having your foundation knocked out from under you. It's very…

I'm sorry, I'm complaining to you again.

Misery loves company? I suppose. But I don't want either of us to be miserable anymore. I don't want anyone to be. I don't want this twin of my friend to die like he did anymore than Anise could fight you. She didn't want anyone to have to suffer like Ion did, and if she can't protect our Ion anymore… She misses Ion, and Ion grew up with her as his mother. I think she'd be a good mother to him, but if you're not letting him out of your sight either you're going to have to break some of her old habits. For her, your face means someone who will get horribly sick if they fight, needs to be bullied into standing up for themselves, actually enjoys her running their life… You didn't have a protector, you wanted one, so don't call Ion weak for liking that Anise did all the stuff you had to do alone for him. He was just a kid, like me, and you're more like Asch. Yeah, you're right, we were sheltered and it cost us. But you're not a kid anymore. The haircut should help remind her. But she misses him, so… There's an Ion-shaped hole in her heart, and, yeah, she's already fighting to protect him for Ion's sake. He thinks she's wonderful. No one ever cared for him before, yes, you know the feeling.

But he thinks you're great too. You were the one that took him away from Mohs, even if you wouldn't have done it normally. I didn't tell him that, you can if you want.

We were kids, and kids have this instinct that there should be parents, one that looks out for them and one that watches over them. I, well, I had Guy and Van. He'd like it if those people were Anise and you.

Yes. You're family, or you could be. You're already related closer than most families, you and him.

He wouldn't care about what you've done. He knows what you did for him. It's… Yeah, love makes you weak, but I think it's that it can be so strong that it makes you feel weak by comparison if you have to fight it. I love Master Van, and when that made me strong when I did things for him, so he would be proud of me, now that I know he doesn't love me back I have to fight that emotion and it's hard. It hurts. It's so wonderful if someone loves you that losing it hurts like anything.

I, it's worse now that he's back then when I thought he was dead. Then it was over with, you know? But he's coming and I'm going to have to fight him again and he'll call me names and look at me like I'm nothing like before and reject me again and… I want him to love me, I want it to be real, and it's going to hurt. I can do it, I did it before, and Asch will help me and I'll be able to stay stronger for his sake than I would for just my own, he feels the same way, but…

I guess now I know how I feel when people get irritated at me for apologizing. You didn't understand what was going on, not really. Of course, I didn't either. But even if those things weren't our faults then it's still terrible they happened. It's sad, and 'sorry' means sorrowful. We're sad that it happened. It was horrible.

…Legretta said that to you? I'm glad Tear's not with us fighting her. Natalia is doing okay with Largo, although it's hard. She's a very strong person when she knows where she stands. She'll be a good queen because she worries so much about figuring out what's going on, doing the right thing, and not hurting people. Asch is proud of her.

He talked about her? Really? The Dark Wings said it was sixty percent Natalia, thirty percent me, and ten percent Van, all he ever talked about.

Sixty Van, thirty how he hated me, ten percent Natalia? It's good that he remembered her.

He talked to you like ten times outside of work, so it was one time that he told you that you'd better not hurt her when you made a joke?

I guess that's right. He was so lonely. They implied that he never shut up. I… At least I had Guy, even if I wasn't supposed to talk with the servants. What else was there to do? They didn't actually want me to study, I was doomed anyway so there was no point and I couldn't measure up to their Luke.

Yeah. Being a replacement sucks. At least you and Ion knew you weren't Fon Master Ion and so it wasn't _your_ fault you got sick doing Daathic Fonic Artes he could do just fine.

They told you that it was?

Yeah. Bastards. They were the ones who didn't make you well enough that you could be healthy, their own fault.

Akashic Torment…

Sorry, I was just thinking about your mystic arte. They're all sort of telling, aren't they?

Why Radiant Howl?

It just came to me, like they all do, but… Light of the sacred flame, and the seventh fonon is more commonly known as the fonon of sound even if it's time as well. I'm not sure how aware of that I was at the time, I know I didn't know I was part of Lorelei, for one thing, but the part of me that picked it knew.

You don't know what the word Akashic means? It's a very old word, older than Ancient Ispanian. Long ago, the memory particles were called the Akashic Record. The heavenly library, containing all possible knowledge. Not just the past and future, but every single possible past and future, everyone's memories and experiences, anything that could happen anywhere in the universe. They understood back then that it was constantly updated and any single history book in it was certainly not inevitable.

The score… the seven fonstones are a single book, the mostly likely to happen given those fonstones being there. The Dawn Wars were what happened when people figured out how to control what they found in the library with fontech. Before that it was pretty rare and not all that reliable. I mean, infinite books and no index.

They didn't know it was a fonon until the Dawn Age, they thought it was kind of superstition since it didn't work like the other fonons. They knew it had to do with sound even in those days, although they were more interested in the Collective Unconscious part. They would use the arte, go to the library with a question and be shown something in kind of a dream. Lorelei's the librarian, using that metaphor. So if someone were to go there wanting to know about how to win a war they'd generally get shown a bunch of atrocities including their own painful death.

…yeah, you heard right from Asch, I was a wimp about killing at first. I mean, killing someone is a big deal. Well, it is for people who didn't grow up under a death sentence if they weren't useful.

I didn't know I was under a death sentence_ because_ it was useful at the time, okay?

Lorelei… remembers every possible painful death that could happen to everyone. Ion could have died lots of ways, lots of them worse, and also having all the memories of all their good times, all they have to live for… Natalia doesn't know what would have happened if she hadn't been handed over according to the score. Largo being her father is pretty academic. She's not my uncle's daughter, but she has all those memories of being his daughter. She doesn't have any good memories with Largo, but _I do_. Or Lorelei does. I'm trying not to think about it, because Asch and I _can_ find things in the library.

What would have happened to Meryl if her grandmother hadn't gone to the score for advice? Well, given the score, most likely her mother's suicide would have been a murder and her grandmother would have been intimidated into handing Natalia over anyway. But it didn't _have _to be that way.

Are you starting to get why I really hate the score? It's Lorelei's responsibility.

Anyway, Akashic Torment: It's not you being tormented. A mystic arte is what you do to other people.

It's the damage infinite potential can do to that which tries to constrain it. And I suppose mine is Lorelei's protest, my protest, now that I think about it.

Yeah, you want to torment them, not just damage. I guess crying out in protest is pretty soft by comparison, you're right. But it's hard to hate people when even when I didn't know I knew underneath. Van's someone worth loving, and he could have been such a very wonderful father. When you see the potential for something so beautiful, it's hard to kill it. Like Natalia could be Natalia or Meryl. Choosing Natalia means not letting Meryl exist. Largo's daughter _did _die as an infant.

…yeah, it is kind of a copout to have the seventh fonon attack artes call on the other fonons for the dirty work. I don't like it, I don't like killing people, but it's kind of necessary sometimes. I mean, there's always another choice, but sometimes it's kill someone or let millions of people get killed. And not letting seventh fonists have attack artes at all is restricting their right to choose.

…is it my fault so few people are good enough to use seventh fonon attack artes? It's something that's as unnatural for the fonon as putting out a fire with fifth fonic artes would be. You can do it, but you have to be really good and know what you're doing.

Why isn't this distracting us? Because you have the ability to be a fon master even if you weren't sturdy enough. Using the library is like, well, not like breathing for you, breathing will happen without you thinking about it, but you can, oh, deliberately take really deep breaths without it being distracting.

Yeah, actually, I did point him at records of children's stories. Although he's not so much reading them as experiencing memories of possible himselfs being in plays about children's stories, he likes that better. Otherwise he would have watched the fight, or listened to it after he closed his eyes, and he, well, you don't like fighting either. Fighting back, yes, but he doesn't want to see you or Anise or anyone get hurt.

Don't do that now!

Talking like this is one thing, actually seeing a memory is another. You're in the planet storm during it, not your personal body: it's left empty.

I should have warned you? I didn't think you'd want to go live out a fantasy when you're living out one already! It's not_ my_ fault you fell flat on your face. A fight isn't a good time to start experimenting! I have the instincts for this, and so does Asch because we were in the same body for so long. You don't. People usually have to spend decades studying and meditating to be able to do what you just did on command!

Oh, and he's about to die, in a few more hits. If you want to finish him off yourself you'd better hurry, because I know that look on Anise's face and she's about to pull off that really weird mystic arte of hers. I can't believe Anise has an arte that involves throwing money away. Yeah, she'd really have to be delirious to consider it.

…Damn it.

Would you mind telling them Van started hurrying up?

Yeah, he did detect what you just did. I was helping the kid find things, but you just sort of… if I hadn't stabilized the two of you already you would be dead, you know that? Yes, that is why Tear is looking at you funny, it's not that you 'tripped.' She felt you doing something and knows it wasn't clumsiness. _Natalia_ felt that, and she's good but she's nowhere near a potential fon master or descendant of Yulia's level.

Yeah, we're done here too.

…the curse slot's been inactive since about a minute into the fight.

Van will be here in about three minutes.

I know, I'm not expecting you to fight with us. We've fought you before, anyway, so that would have too high a risk of friendly fire, especially since we're fighting him and might not be able to focus on keeping allies unaffected by our artes enough to compensate. You're both replicas, you just killed _Mohs, _not a god-generalso Van won't care, plus you don't have to tell him the curse slot was inactive for most of it. He's not someone you really have a reason to fight.

If you try to help him I'll put it back on, yes. I don't want to have to fight both of you.

Yes, I'm soft and I hate fighting. Would you rather have someone bloodthirsty enough to, oh, be fine with things like Hod and Akzeriuth be in charge of my fonon? I didn't think so.

…he managed to trap Lorelei, the main Lorelei, and most of the memories related to what happened with Yulia and the Score and the Fonic Hymns back then are in the Sword. It's composed of the seventh fonons that contain those books and he won't wake up and let us see them. I don't know how Van can control Lorelei like this. The Grand Fonic Hymn, sure, but I don't know the details and what he could do with it. You're right, we could lose. And if that happens Guy, Natalia, and Anise will fight him next.

Of course I'm worried! I don't know the specific past that happened, so I don't have any real basis for figuring out what futures might, and that means… there are a lot of really horrible things that could happen. An infinite number of them.

Yes, I'm scared. Asch is too. He's strong, and…

I think you're kind of overestimating Lorelei. The Score turned out like that because the last scion messed up, Sync. Messed up bad. The Order thinks Lorelei's this ultimate wise being that never makes mistakes _because of_ a mistake. The Score should never have become this world's only history on pain of death to all who oppose it or are doomed by it.

So, 'I' messed up, and the part of me that did it… it was bad, I just am not letting myself know how bad. And I'm worried. Asch…

Just because… It's complicated. I missed him, and he understands this. It's apparently an isofon thing in general, but it's more so for us since I'm not just a personality that formed out of his pattern, like children do from their parents' patterns, I was part of him until I kind of automatically moved into the more suitable body. This one's all seventh fonons, not all seven in a mix that adds up to the right frequency. The probability of Asch having Lorelei's frequency naturally is exactly zero. He was predicted so that I would be. Towards the end, there were situations that would lead to replicas in the score. I don't know for sure, but I think they hoped that since we have the ability to that we might be able to ignore the score and avert humanity's destruction by telling people about the Closed Score or something. I mean, the Fon Master needing to be replicated? That was just begging, or praying, for a replica to tell people what would happen if Akzeriuth and the war weren't stopped.

But the Score has a lot of inertia, and a lot of defenders. Like Mohs.

And Van.

Think about it. He could have kept me away from Akzeriuth. Instead he knowingly worked to bring about the score.

…If you want to help Anise, Guy and Natalia if he gets past us then I'm not going to complain, but the odds aren't very good that you can stop him if we can't.

I guess you're right.


	7. Sins of the Fathers

Van is a habitual deceiver and the fact he's nuts and has logic holes you could fit Eldrant through in his thinking don't make him any easier to figure out as a character. And yet Luke and I keep trying to figure out how to get along with him. The word is masochism.

-

"Asch. Mystearica. Luke." That was surprising. He surveyed them, and the necromancer. "I wasn't expecting to see you here." He noted two bodies to the side, covered out of respect for the dead and out of the way of the probable battle. Largo, definitely, and either Sync or Legretta, judging from the size. From what he'd felt, Sync had most likely fallen into the core again, perhaps trying to retreat. For seventh fonists the core was a hospitable place: Sync had drifted there half-dead for quite awhile before Van had found him none the worse for wear. Van could retrieve him later.

"Van… Why couldn't you have…" Mystearica swallowed, centered herself.

"You know why I couldn't just stay dead." None of them seemed to want to make the first move. The three he'd named didn't truly want to fight, although Asch's habitual death glare tried to say otherwise. The necromancer was hanging a bit behind what he seemed to regard as his forces, studying him. As a colonel he was the only one of their group with any command experience: he noticed Van notice him studying him, obviously, but they both knew how this went, unlike these children. "Where are the others?" Gone to close the gate? Impossible, the only two with hyperresonance were here. That wasn't a threat, not yet.

The group here was easily the most suited to opposing him, especially if they knew he had Lorelei's power caged inside him. Asch had worked with the others before, but Natalia wasn't here and the replica was. They weren't standing that close to each other, but it seemed more tactical prudence than the normal hostility. Asch's mask showed nothing but the usual.

Luke's eyes were sorrowful, as they had been when Van had fallen. How very pathetic, although they failed to inspire pity in someone who had determined he would do what was necessary before he'd created the replica.

Those wide eyes let him notice something it had been harder to see in Asch's. "Well well well. You did invent that arte, Necromancer."

"I'm sorry, as you know I've invented so many it's hard to keep track. Which one are you talking about?"

"Giving them seventh-fonon fonic sight? Clever." A hybrid of what Dist had used on Mohs, the technique Jade had tried on himself and killed their professor in the process, the so very convenient accident that had led to the first replica, with the normal fonic sight technique. Or so it appeared.

"Oh, that I can't take credit for."

Hmm?

"Master Van."

"Still calling me Master?"

"You are a lot of other things, but you were my teacher."

"At least he's not calling you Father." Asch shifted that glare to the replica for an instant. So there was still some anger there to be exploited? Luke had been carefully kept from connecting with Asch's parents: Asch seemed to still feel that Luke hadn't appreciated what he hadn't had.

"Master Van." Luke ignored the barb. "If there was a way to destroy the score and let humanity survive without creating a replica world and killing Lorelei, would you take it? Or is it more about vengeance than making things right? Legretta couldn't believe that she could have free will while Lorelei existed. Largo wanted to destroy the people who followed the Score so blindly without caring about the deaths. But how is following the Score and wiping out the human race any different than what they hated? Guy said that the best revenge is living well. He doesn't want you to create another Hod if it means doing what they did to Hod to the entire world."

"Where is Gailardia?" Judging from that slight reaction, there was some reason for him to be wherever he was. "Engaging Mohs?" That would explain why the spy and the other healer weren't here.

"Out of range, presumably." The man whose works Van had studied more than anything but the Score itself was as chipper as if this were a tea party or other irritatingly pointless social event. "How much control do you have over Lorelei?"

"So you knew? Of course. Lorelei's isofons. And I told you not to listen to the voices in your head, Luke." They weren't here as a back-up plan in case Van could use hyperresonance to destroy them and escape the blast? He didn't have that much control, nowhere near, and he needed the Adsorption Gate intact.

When he'd told the replica it could come live with him after Akzeriuth the fact he scolded Luke had been one of the reasons he'd been so happy about the idea. What strange children replicas were. Offer Luke advice and he'd challenge your right to give it. Rub it in when he made a mistake and he would appreciate the guidance if you had that right.

Van remembered when he and Gailardia had grown up together. The Fende family had been in service to his for generations. You were loyal to your lord, provided he was worthy. Any who tried to attain your service had to prove that worthiness. And if your lord ceased to be worthy then it was a servant's duty to try to return them to the right path, but once a sword was given only the lord could return it. That was why Van had tried to get through to Gailardia for so long, but once his sword had been returned there was only the memory of friendship as a reason to spare him, and if it came down to it he would even kill Mystearica if he had to, to create the promised land.

Luke had grown up under 'Guy's' tutelage, so perhaps it was not so odd he had that viewpoint, although the Duke would be outraged that his son, or perhaps sons, considered Van their rightful lord.

"If there was another way to destroy the Score, would you take it?" Luke asked again, refusing to be distracted. Strange that Asch was letting him be the mouthpiece.

"There is not. Over two thousand years of suffering, the world enslaved by the Score, all leading up to this. There is no other way: deviations are as nothing before the Score."

"If there was," he repeated.

"You think you have one?"

"Answer the damn question!" Asch's sword, the Sword of Lorelei, was pulled a handspan out of its sheath as he lost hold of his temper, and then Van saw that it wasn't the Sword at all.

"So, you found the Jewel."

"Answer the question, or I kill you here and now!"

"Or? Still wanting to find another way." His tone dripped with contempt. "Such children."

"Master Van, please!" Those golden eyes, resigned and yet desperately hopeful at the same time…

He recognized them, and then everything seemed to fall into place. "Lorelei." The presence that had come to him when he sang the Grand Fonic Hymn as he floated in the core, knowing what would happen (how could it not?), trying to avoid capture yet still trying to save him despite the fact his survival meant its death. Mingled mourning and caring, guilt and pity, enough pain that most would have sought release (and in Lorelei's case that would do the world a favor) yet determinedly clinging to life.

As soon as he said that Asch moved, drawing his sword and placing himself between his once-hated replica and Van in clear warning and wrath. Asch, protecting Luke? No. The Light of the Sacred Flame guarding the Scion of Lorelei he had once been the vessel of. The golden eyes suddenly seemed far more sinister than the Necromancer's pretentious red. Asch was lost to him, the one he had meant to use to create the new world, as lost as Mystearica and Gailardia. And why had Gailardia lost sight of his purpose? Who did Mystearica watch over? "_You_." He didn't attack yet, although his hand rested on the hilt of his sword.

Lorelei closed its eyes, so sorrowful, and Van smiled. An easy matter to get out of their reach, easier than floating up against the current from the core. And where had he seen those eyes before, what had allowed him to escape from the core? "Toue rei zue kuroa…" The Grand Fonic Hymn, symbol of Yulia's pact with Lorelei, would compel it to obey that pact even at the cost of its own life.

Luke's eyes widened, but not because he knew his doom. Whatever he was seeing wasn't Van. Whatever it was made him fall to his knees, sobbing.

"You!" Van was out of range, so Asch joined Jade in casting. Taking her cue, Mystearica joined in. He'd hoped she might pick a fonic hymn, perhaps the sixth or third, as that would make this go quicker, but she wasn't that foolish: Enhance Cast was the first arte to be completed.

He had almost finished the fourth hymn when he realized that he did not recognize what Asch was casting.

Van managed to pick out, "…transcribes an ellipse in the aether…" from all the noise that their spells made: the fact that Luke's sobbing voice sounded like his wasn't helping. An ellipse was another word for oval, transcribes meant writes, but Van had no idea what aether meant. "Wandering Star!"

"Gah!" That could only have been the planetary fonic arte: there weren't any other artes anywhere near as powerful. But no one knew how to use even an imperfect form, especially since the Oracle Knight who had been working on the project… had become Professor Gelda Nebilim. Although if Jade knew it he wouldn't be staring at Asch. And in fact the planetary fonic arte had never been completed as an attack arte. How did Asch know it?

The planet's memory.

An impact like that had forced even him to stop casting, but he drew on Lorelei's power to heal and resumed. From how long it took, even with Enhance Cast Asch wouldn't be able to use another in time.

…except that Asch had done enough to be able to use a mystic arte. "Oh teardrops that have fallen in the sea of time, all the ages are sadder for it. Be released from the abyss and add thy voices to the music of the spheres: Prophecy Break!"

The key slammed down against the ground and the world shattered.

Van found himself falling for a few moments when the world started again, only to be enveloped in the red-gold warm light that was Lorelei and gently placed upon the platform before it twined briefly around Asch, who was wiping at Luke's face with one of the replica's own coattails to remove the tear streaks. Some message seemed to be exchanged between the three and then it flew upwards. "No…" His hand reached up to pull it back within reach of his vengeance, but it was futile. "Do you realize what you've done?"

"Killed you. Or we will have, shortly." The necromancer's spear came down and Van's sword caught it. He blinked, realizing that Lorelei had once again restored his strength.

"Ow! Asch, what did you hit me for?"

"Because you're an idiot, that's why!"

"Me? What did I do? Lorelei was the one that healed him."

"And you're Lorelei."

"I am, but I don't make decisions for the other mes!"

"Well, you're still you, and how am I supposed to hit something in the fon belt? So you'll have to do!"

"Children, could we please have a little less bickering and a lot more preventing the destruction of Auldrant?" Jade's spear grated against Van's sword, deadlocked

"Don't worry." Luke stood up shakily. "We already prevented it. Well, Asch did."

"The Score is unreadable, Yulia's fonic hymns won't work anymore, the miasma has already been destroyed, Lorelei is free and will now break any and all replica machines anyone builds, there won't be a war, Van couldn't use Fang Blade to save his life, and I'm hungry." Yes: his fon slots were sealed, and he highly doubted that this seal would come off.

"…the Score is unreadable?" Without the Score, there would be no new war over it. As long as the Score could be used to see and control the future it was an irresistible temptation to the sort of men who had caused Hod.

"The fonstones that held it have disappeared. Humanity can't be sealed away from the planet's memory because the planet's memory is also humanity's memory, everyone would have permanent amnesia and that's not good," the replica had thought it had amnesia and would know, "but everyone's already forgotten how to make the Dawn Age fontech that was able to read the planet's memory against Lorelei's wishes."

Yulia had created the score to stop the wars that resulted from the leaders of the countries trying to select the future that best suited each of them. When the miasma threatened extinction, she had made a pact with Lorelei to predict a single future that all would follow, ending the war. One that let humanity survive. In Eldrant, the promised land, because peace had been impossible while the planet's memory posed the temptation it did.

"And that can be prevented from working now too. That's going to be hard, the scion back then tried so many ways of protecting it and they kept finding ways around them. Well, if I, or Lorelei, puts them all in place again right now and keeps working on it, if no one has any success at all then not that many will try, especially if I keep an eye on things and discourage research. Um… it should be around 500 years, minimum, until anyone stumbles on the principles. The seventh fonon was discovered so late, a thousand or so years after their fontech for all the other fonons was at the level ours is today, because it works very differently and the Order of Lorelei did a good job stamping out knowledge of how to mess around with it. So people will have to start not only from scratch but with a very wrong idea of how to do it. So that's lots of lead time."

"Why did you let it happen in the first place?" Asch asked, hands on his hips, 'you idiot,' an unspoken addition.

"It wasn't me, or… memories shape people. I'm, or I was, who Lorelei's… self would be with your body and Luke's life. The scion in the Dawn Age was very different from me. Anyway, Lorelei was asleep."

"Asleep?" Mystearica asked, pulling her eyes away from Van.

"The fonon sentiences don't intervene all that much, and people didn't really have seventh fonon fonic artes back then. And there are an infinite amount of possible futures, and if I was going to worry about everything that could possibly go wrong…" Luke shrugged helplessly: not even possible for Lorelei. "I got woken up by Dr. Ju… oh, the memories are unsealed now. Your ancestress built the first prophecy fon machine. I thought the first few pokes were just people having dreams, that was all I used to have to deal with, and then I had people groping me! Anyway, once she did it they knew it worked and the general idea of how to, and I had to play catch-up. There were periods of months sometimes when I kept everything from working, but there was so much power involved that they kept looking until they found ways around every single thing I tried, and then Julia figured out who I, the me back then, was since I'd had to manifest to find out what they were up to in specific, and…" Luke sighed. "I only got a mind when humans happened. The others are all thousands of times my age. The only advice I got was kill them until they stopped, and I didn't think it was that bad at first, but it ended up with _everyone _doing it so quickly…"

Asch put a hand on his shoulder. "You, or that you, did the best you could. Don't think about it, it's not good for you and the Key is back in the fon belt so we can't use the Chalice."

Luke almost tackled him, hiding his face against Asch's chest.

"I'll make a note to tell Peony to make further research into the seventh fonon high treason. If he's incapable of using fonons then why can he keep me from pressing him back?" With his slots sealed Van should be limited to default human strength.

"It's just the artes. The seventh fonon… He's Julia's descendant, and he was trying to do the right thing, and so much terrible stuff happened to him because of the score, and he's not an evil person-"

"I beg to differ," Asch interjected.

"Well, he could have been a wonderful person. You know why I hate killing. That ends so many potential wonderful futures, it's, it's always a… you're preventing entire worlds from being by doing that." Luke shook his head. "I don't want to kill again. I did it for, because I had to, and--but now I know what I'm doing and…"

"If someone needs killing I'll handle it," Asch told him. Including Van, if necessary.

"I don't want you to, I shouldn't… I don't want to be a burden."

"Ahem." Could you two please talk about this later?

"Encircle that which awaits: Briar!" Van found himself tied up by what looked like living barbed wire that rewarded a cautious attempt at movement with blood.

"While that's better than nothing, Asch, this is Vandesdelca, not Arietta." Jade's thrust was also blocked by the briars. "He's responsible for the deaths of ten thousand at Akzeriuth, ten thousand replicas at the Tower of Rem, over twenty-nine thousand and counting reported deaths due to replica data extraction, attacks on the forces of Malkuth and Kimlasca while impersonating members of the opposite force, conspiracy to end the world, whatever the eventual body count from the miasma damage will be, and I could go on all day. There's no point in taking him back when it's unsafe, they already had the trial, and I'm carrying a death warrant."

"You're going to kill him in cold blood?" Luke couldn't even look.

"I do everything in cold blood." Jade walked around Van in hope there was an opening.

"No, you don't." Luke looked up at him, determined. "At least let people say goodbye, please. There's Tear, and Guy, and… It's over, we don't have to rush anymore, and I…"

"He used you."

"I know."

"This is why I'm often glad I'm still at least somewhat of a monster." Jade the Necromancer had moved so that Van's body was between him and the two of them, and it appeared that the circling might have been to increase the Battle Master's overlimit. The force of the fonons as he invoked it knocked Van around a bit despite the arte that kept him confined. He somehow doubted that something this simple would protect him from the mystic arte he could feel the Necromancer invoking.


	8. Penance

By the time Indignation hit Force Field was up. "Colonel."

Oh, Mystearica, I didn't ask you to be a perfect soldier.

"Please. I came from Yulia City to kill him, I won't change my mind. But he's still my brother."

He heard Jade sigh. "Well, he's tried to convince you several times since you found out the truth. I suppose you and Guy are less gullible than the two-thousand-year-old infant and Van's kidnapping and torture victim turned servant, but _no more than an hour_."

"Thank you," Luke and Tear said. "I'll bring the others." Luke closed his eyes again.

"It's only going to make it harder on everyone, but if you're going to torture yourselves then I suppose I'll just have to watch." Despite his light tone, it was clear that he would not enjoy their misery, no matter that it would be their own fault and he'd warned them. He came back into Van's view, spear concealed once more.

Gailardia appeared, along with Natalia, Anise, Sync, and another Ion replica that stuck close to the latter two. Sync, protective of another replica? Arietta dead, Dist vanished, Largo and Legretta dead before he arrived, Asch and it appeared Sync defected. At least Sync's eyes weren't that golden hue. His former lord's eyes were solemn. "Van. Vandesdelca Musto Fende, I, Gailardia Galan Gardios swear upon my honor, my name, and my life that I will not permit anyone to even work towards replacing the Score or any more atrocities to be committed in its name no matter the cost."

"I thank you." That was perhaps all he could ask for.

"Van, I…" Mystearica. "You're my brother." She loved him, but that also meant his sins were her duty to correct. "I…" She looked down at her hands, at the floor.

"I know."

There was a silence, interrupted by, "Can we just kill him already?" The spy pouted at them.

"Anise!" Natalia was shocked.

"He's a bastard!" Anise was unrepentant. There was saying that the faults others objected to the most in others were their own faults. Anise was a traitor. For her parents' sake, she had betrayed Ion. For the world's sake, Van had betrayed Luke and Asch. He'd intended Luke to die because of it, just as Ion had died because of Anise's treachery.

"Please don't say that." Luke again. "I know he was, but… Anise, your father's a complete idiot with money and it's his fault that you were in that situation, but that's not all he is." Luke's tone was apologetic as he stated the truth.

Anise started to growl an answer, but choked it back. "Fine. I'll be with the Colonel. Come on." She tugged the other replica, who looked at Sync worriedly.

"Van, I joined you to destroy the Score. I owe you my life twice over, and it's thanks to you that I'm here and the Score isn't." Sync had outlived his nemesis. He didn't know how to say thanks, and what he did was an impulsive gesture. "I'm naming him after you." He pointed at the replica.

"What!" Anise screeched.

"A replica with the name of the greatest criminal of the past few centuries, if not all time. Yes, that's going to earn him a lot of friends." Jade rolled his eyes.

"Shut up! Maybe Delca instead of Vandesdelca," that word meant Glory, "but he needs a name and it's a good name!"

"No it's not!"

"Oh, like Florian was any better. Flower-Ion, why not just name him Ion the whatever number he is? I'm not going to let you raise him for the slaughter like your Ion was!"

"Children, I'm getting a headache and you're scaring the baby." More like the people Jade was surrounded by _were_ the headache.

Delca (Sync wouldn't keep that promise, surely not) had retreated behind Asch, who seemed resigned to the fact he now had two replicas hanging off him. Sync clearly had no idea how to deal with that. "Uh, it's okay, she's just being a jerk."

"Children…" Jade's fuse was shortening.

Sync looked like he was going to object to that, but Luke stopped him. "Sync, he's just like that, and it's been rough for everyone. You can always duel Anise later."

"If she keeps this up you bet I will."

Anise's response was stopped by Jade's hand on her shoulder. "There's something else going on right now, Anise."

Natalia didn't have anything to say.

That left Asch, and Luke. Van's hope and the one he had made so that he could have Asch. They looked at each other. "I have nothing I want to say to him," Asch stated firmly.

"That's not true."

"I have nothing I want to say to him that I haven't said already, and you don't either."

That… was probably true.

"I know," Luke answered.

"You're bleeding again."

"Bleeding?" Mystearica asked, concerned.

"It's a metaphor." Van wondered what it was a metaphor for, except it was clearly a cause for concern.

"It's… I'll be fine." Luke backed away from him a bit, standing up on his own. "I'll be fine, we're together now and I have everyone."

"I didn't get a lot of it until I found that mystic arte. You're made up of memory. He gave you the guilt of Akzeriuth and made every memory you had mean less than nothing!" Everything Luke had known had been lies and founded on those lies.

"And Lorelei let the Score be made, which caused him to have the guilt of Hod and know that his own grandfather actively worked to bring it about."

"That doesn't make it right!"

"No, but it makes us even. Actually, I owe him more than…"

"Stop thinking what people do to you doesn't matter! When they hurt you, they hurt me!" There seemed to be something different there than Asch's usual, 'that stupid dreck is embarrassing me,' complaint.

"I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing, too!"

Luke wanted to apologize, but he'd been listening. Seeing his expression, Asch heaved an exasperated sigh and put a hand on Luke's shoulder in his own apology and to comfort him. "You're too nice."

Luke managed to not apologize. Asch seemed to find that impressive, for Luke. "Go ahead and say what you need to say. If it takes too long I'll knock you out before you get too hurt."

The love, the trust in those golden eyes had once been reserved for him. When they turned to him it was still there, after everything, amidst all the sorrow. "Master Van, I want you to know that I love you, and I'm sorry. I mean, I'm sure you… But I couldn't ever hate you, and I wish it was okay to change the past, so you wouldn't have to go through Hod, but doing that would be worse than the Score. I can't undo all the choices that people made, good or terrible. I can't… you made your choices too, and I can't save you. No, I won't, because you made your choices and that's that, but… You were using me, and you were still the person I loved most, because you helped me learn things that no one else would teach me that I needed to know, and… I'm glad you had me made, and…" Tears were already slipping down. "I wish it was real, I wish you'd loved me, it would have been wonderful, but even if you didn't I still love you. If I was, if I was what you thought I was, then I'd have made you be my father and I would have let you have Eldrant if that was what you wanted. Well, I would have done a lot of things differently, like not let Hod happen, so we probably wouldn't have met. But I can't let you end all those people's lives anymore than I could let the Score continue. I wish we hadn't had to fight."

As a naïve child he hadn't known how to express these feelings, or even how to recognize most of them. He'd said he hated the manor and carefully not thought about why. About how he was being blamed for not doing things he simply couldn't, held to impossible standards, and it was such a relief when someone held him to reasonable standards, gave him guidance that he could actually live up to, scolded him for things that actually were his fault instead of things he couldn't help. Even Guy hadn't known the truth, even Guy hadn't seen Luke but Asch when he looked at the child that had come home.

He was still fumbling for words, still wanting Van to see him, acknowledge him, after all that had happened. Luke had thought that Van was the only one who acknowledged him or would acknowledge him. He'd asked Luke if he couldn't live without a purpose, and Van's own answer to that question would be no. He'd suffered so much, if there was no reason to go on living then there was no reason.

His had been to raise Eldrant, both fulfilling the score and destroying it. Without that, knowing that it had been unnecessary and, in fact, counterproductive, what reason did he have to stay? He'd thrown himself into the core instead of clinging to life after the last defeat, and had only come back when he thought of a way that he could win. Otherwise he would have drifted there until he died, at rest and in peace.

Luke had done so much for Van's sake. Counted the days until the next training day, diligently practiced when he wouldn't for anyone else since there was no reason to do it for anyone else (no matter what he did a four year old couldn't catch up to a fourteen year old: his hard work wouldn't be acknowledged, so why bother?), saved him from imprisonment, kept secrets from his true friends, come with him to Akzeriuth's Sephiroth…

And it had all been a lie.

It should have been righteous vengeance, to see Lorelei like this. And yet he couldn't help but think, now, of the men who had placed him in that machine and used him to destroy his own home. He hated them, but what if his own father had been the one to do it? Grandfather knowingly helping bring it about was horrible enough, and Teodoro hadn't let himself get attached to Van, meaning Van hadn't been attached to him.

Just like Duke Fabre hadn't let himself get attached to either Luke.

Doing it for a purpose was one thing. Doing it to create a world in which there would be no more people used the way he had been used and he'd used Luke, that was one thing. That was justified.

Using a child uncaringly to suit his purposes and cover up his crimes (just like Hod had been destroyed mostly to cover up the fomicry research that had taken place _because_ Hod was going to be destroyed): that was not just.

If he had done that, if that was what all this had truly been, then everything he'd done had been for no purpose and he had no reason to continue living with this guilt. How had Luke gone on living after Akzeriuth? Van had lived because Mystearica needed him, the survivors like Gailardia and Arietta needed him, the dead needed vengeance.

"I wished to create a world free of the Score, but I already knew that I would have no place in it," was what he said finally. "I have no regrets." That was a lie. "Everything I did was for the sake of the future. Mystearica, Gailardia, Asch, Sync: I wanted you to see that future, so that all your suffering would not have been for nothing. Luke, I intended you to die as soon as your purpose was completed, not live on and suffer as I did. This was not what I intended, but I will make no excuses." He met each of their eyes. "I have brought this upon myself, by following the Score." A crime that he had killed thousands for, and was willing to suffer the same punishment.

His foolish pride: did he have a right to pride, here and now? "I am sorry," he admitted, the words dragged out of him. "Now, finish it!"

"I love you, Master Van," Luke said one last time as Asch dismissed the arte and pulled his Maestro Sword out of nowhere (the Key had vanished).

"I love you, big brother." Mystearica was trying so hard not to cry: he wished she would stop torturing herself and just let them fall.

"Farewell, Vandesdelca." Gailardia's face was grave, and as noble as the Count he had been born and would have been if Van had not let himself be used to ruin everything.

A scroll case was snapped open. "By the power vested in me by Emperor Peony the Ninth of Malkuth, King Ingobert of Kimlasca, and Mayor Teodoro of Yulia City, acting leader of the Order of Lorelei, I, Colonel Jade Curtiss of the Malkuth Imperial Forces hereby pronounce upon Vandesdelca Musto Fende, aka former Dorian General Van Grants, the sentence of death for the following crimes: the destruction of the city of Akzeriuth, conspiracy to destroy the world, and a whole long list of others I'm not going to bother reading…" Jade scrolled through the scroll. "The sentence shall be carried out by the authorized agent of the court… Asch, you're not on the list."

Asch just stared at him: Jade shrugged. "Death in battle is one thing. Executions have to be lawful, and we're going to get asked about all the gory details later." _You _were the ones who wanted to do it the hard way.

"I don't care." God-general Asch the Bloody had done executions before: he and his former commander both knew how this went. Van knelt for the blade.

"Is the name 'Luke fon Fabre' on the list?" Luke asked.

"Of course."

"That's your name." Asch rested his sword on Van's shoulder, getting a feel for the height. It took skill to take the head off with the first stroke and make this quick. It was perhaps Asch's own acknowledgement of his teacher that he was making the effort, although that wasn't a good sword for it.

"No." Quiet resolve there. "It's ours."

"Legally, you still have a perfect right to the name," Jade concurred. "The authorized agent of the court Luke fon Fabre." The scroll was wound back up, slid into the case, and the case was snapped closed. "Well, carry on then."

Gold eyes closed for a moment in mourning before opening only to narrow in resolve. "Goodbye." There should be hate there, although there was no affection either. Asch's love for him had a lot longer to be snuffed out than Luke's. And yet there was a slight nod of respect, student to master, a soldier who had fought for the world and his purpose to another.

Van nodded in acknowledgement and closed his eyes. The sword was removed and swung back.


	9. Eternal Life

"Anise, enlarge your puppet and help me tie the body to it."

"What?"

"After what happened last time, they're not going to believe that he's safely dead until they have the body and have verified it's not a replica." Jade bent down. "Or I suppose we could just bring the head, it's a traditionally acceptable substitute. Luke, put this in the item bag."

"Mieu," the cheagle said quietly in dismay, not wanting to share space with something that disgusting. He was a herbivore, after all.

Luke grimaced, not wanting his teacher's head on his person either. He was done crying, but he didn't want to have to carry that grisly reminder. "Tear, would you mind carrying him?" She could use something fluffy.

"…Sure." She took him gratefully.

"I'll take the item bag." Asch held out his hand for it, then reconsidered. "Or we could use hyperresonance. We can only go to seventh fonists we know or places we've been since gaining this power, but that gives us some options."

"What about Noelle?" Guy reminded him. "We should at least go meet up with her."

Anise enlarged her puppet. "Come on, Florian, you can ride Tokunaga up."

The young replica's eyes lit up, then Sync interjected, "He walked down here just fine and he's not sick or anything! Don't insult _Delca_ like that!"

"I'm not insulting him, I'm just showing him a little consideration!"

"You didn't do that for_ your_ Ion, and_ he_ was actually sick because you kept letting Van and Mohs use him!"

"Oh yeah? And who helped Van use him!"

"Well, Luke, how do you plan to resolve this dispute?"

"What are you looking at me for, Jade?"

"Well, you are the one who put the idea into his head, and as our leader this sort of thing is your problem."

"Do you think they'll actually listen?"

"Sync!" Asch barked.

The commanding tone of a former comrade got his attention. "What?"

Asch pointed at the replica, who had taken shelter behind him. "You were always complaining about others deciding your fate and now this? Did it even occur to either of you to ask what_ he_ wants?"

The replica looked terrified at being put on the spot. Asch turned around, gripped the young man's shoulders, and bent down a bit so that he couldn't see either of them. "They're fighting over how to make you happy. If they don't know what makes you happy then they're _both _going to lose that fight."

"…but I like both names. And Tokunaga is really cool, but I also haven't been outside of the place I was kept before and I like walking."

"If you haven't gotten much exercise, then you need to start building muscle right away. Anise, he's walking. And give me one moment to find a gald piece."

"What for?"

"He likes both names, so he'll be named both. You can each call him what you like but I am flipping a coin to see which goes first, at least for now." Asch turned back to Florian/Delca. "Does that sound like a good idea? You can change it later. It's your name, I changed mine when it didn't fit anymore."

He nodded.

"Here." Asch gave him the coin. "You flip it. Heads is before Tails in the alphabet, Delca is before Florian, so heads is Delca Florian and tails is Florian Delca."

"Okay." He looked at it. "Um, how do you flip a coin?"

"Throw it up in the air, not too high, and catch it, but don't look at it yet." After he'd done that, the coin was vertical between his two palms. Asch tilted them to one side. "Lift up your left hand and let's see what's there."

"The side of a man's head?"

"Your full name, for now, is Delca Florian." And that, the glare told Anise and Sync, had better be that. His nickname was not 'the Bloody' for his hair color alone.

"Boo." Anise wasn't happy that she'd lost on both counts. "Uh, no, I'm not booing at you, Florian," she backpedaled quickly. "I think I just used up all my luck getting to kill Mohs. When we get to the Albiore I'll show you how to gamble with dice!"

"That Lucky arte of yours?" Sync asked, curious.

"Not just the arte. I'm a regular dice and card sharp, it was part of how I made money so we wouldn't starve. Hey, do you have any money?" She looked at Asch and back at Sync.

"We confiscated the contents of all their accounts but Asch's. I don't think Sync ever withdrew funds except for mission expenditures in his life." Jade's comment was confirmed by Sync's defensive shrug.

"You mean he's _broke_?" Anise was outraged on his behalf.

"He hasn't a gald to his name, and I believe that's the definition of the term."

"You poor bastard." Sync didn't seem to know how to deal with Anise's sympathy and fellow-feeling as opposed to either enmity or pity. "I'll show you how to cheat too. But you have to promise not to reveal my secret techniques." Sync seemed to have gone from competition to comrade in the injustice that was poverty.

"Anise, given that he's going to have to stand trial for the False Scorer deaths, adding to his criminal record isn't the best idea," Jade reminded her. "Besides, I'm sure I can find him employment."

"I'm not working for Malkuth! I'm the rightful fon master, so I'm going to take over the Order and make it do things _right_." Sync's arms were folded obstinately.

"Is this your fault too, Luke?" Guy seemed pretty amused by all this.

"…Probably."

"Hey, it's the Order of Lorelei, and if Luke is Lorelei…" Anise looked at Sync speculatively. After a few moments, Sync started to grin back.

"Now that an evil plot has been hatched, could we be on our way? Am I correct in thinking that we don't need to shut down the Planet Storm now?" Luke nodded.

"Yulia needed to seal Lorelei in the core for several reasons. Now that the Planet Storm is set up and the Score's gone it's fine without him."

"We're not leaving until I've had something to eat." Everyone had forgotten that Asch had said he was hungry.

"I quite agree, I'm famished." Natalia looked around at the bodies. "Although, could we perhaps eat elsewhere and cook two dishes? As we do not have flowers." They usually cooked enough for six or seven: since there were nine of them and three to mourn (food was an acceptable grave offering), that made sense.

"Wait a second." Luke frowned at his hands, then reached out into gold and pulled out a handful of selenias. Handing them to Natalia, he smiled. "That field is a really easy target."

"Thank you, Luke." Smiling, then more solemn, she took them over to where the father she had barely known lay to pray for him.

"Luke, could I please have some?" Tear asked quietly.

"Here." He handed her two bundles, for her brother and her teacher. He handed another to Asch and then walked over to Van's body with two more. Guy had already covered him and set his sword in the ground, a gravemarker as it would have been if he'd truly died during their last battle. He handed one to Guy and then stood there as Tear scattered her own over the shroud that hid him and prayed.

Guy set his by the sword, the one he had returned to Van when he dismissed his erring knight from his service, but his real offering was a lock of hair, just as Luke had said goodbye to his former self by cutting his in Yulia City, although not so dramatic. Asch and Luke, after looking at each other, did the same. "We could cremate them," Luke suggested, not really liking the idea of leaving them to rot here.

"No." Guy shook his head. "I'll come back for him. The family graveyard on Hod is gone, but he deserves to be laid to rest in the family's graveyard in Grand Chokmah, with his mother."

"Thanks, Guy."

"Luke, you're really too nice a guy, and that's me saying that." Guy ruffled his hair anyway. "Don't change."

"I promised that I would, remember? It's why I'm nice."

"You were always nice, you just didn't know how to express it."


	10. All Things

Dinner ended up being curry, since it was Jade's favorite and he'd headed up the warp and started cooking while the rest of them were being sentimental. Anise, Sync, and Delca were huddled in a corner, and the upshot of that was that the party split into two groups, Anise calling dibs on Tear and also bringing along Jade, since it was agreed that Delca was going to need to learn how to defend himself from replica-haters and other bastards. And cheat in games of chance, since that and mercenary work were ways to earn money in case the taking over the Order thing didn't work out.

Since Delca wasn't at all physically strong yet, Anise had him ride on Tokunaga with her and started teaching him the secrets of the puppeteer art.

Asch would also bet one of the paychecks he hadn't collected in months that Jade was carrying a death warrant for Sync. That he'd said he could find him a job was a hopeful sign that a pardon would be granted.

That left Asch, Luke, Natalia, and Guy, the two sets of three childhood friends and one set of two isofons. "Asch," Natalia said while their group took point for awhile since Tear had paused the other group to make Delca some cake, "Do you still remember our promise, to look after Kimlasca together?"

"I never forgot it."

"I asked Luke recently to make me the same promise." She stopped, and he stopped as well, letting Luke and Guy go ahead, chatting. "You are both my dear friends. When we encountered the Dark Wings at Mt. Roneal they told us that you spoke of me often. I, I was very happy to hear that." She blushed, being awkwardly formal as she often was when flustered. "I know that you may not be comfortable in Baticul for some time. I have always waited for you. I was so occupied with waiting for you that I did not see Luke for far too long. If you need to leave again, or whatever you wish, I will wait. It is because I wanted to keep my promise to you that I became a princess the people approve of. You taught me and showed me that. I owe you, and Luke, my deepest gratitude. You have already fulfilled your promise to me, Asch, and so has Luke. If you wish to make another one, I would be very happy." He opened his mouth but she raised her hand. "Not yet. So much has happened, and I find that I did not know Luke and I don't know Asch yet. I have also changed. That, and the world has changed. Now more than ever it is my duty to do my duty as my father's daughter. If you wish to make another promise, then please wait until a year from this day."

"Natalia, I… I never forgot about you. I wanted to go back to you, keep my promise, when it was all over, but with what I've done…" She put a finger to his lips.

"Perhaps you should speak to Luke of your own feelings of guilt as well as his own." She smiled. "Let's speak of this again in a year, Asch. You are my dear childhood friend, but we have been apart for so long. If you come to love someone other than I, then please do not feel too bound by your promise to follow your heart. Jade invented a letter from Emperor Peony to my father asking for my hand as some sort of ruse, as when I spoke to Peony he knew nothing of it. However, he did express interest." She sighed. "I seem to be a very popular princess. Oh, what to do…" Peony would be a _dream_ alliance marriage, perhaps uniting the two kingdoms, but there was Asch, who she had loved as a child, and there was loveable Luke… Not to mention that as she was not her father's daughter she truly should marry Asch as he was the rightful heir to the throne, although Asch would most likely reject the idea that he should be king because of the family ties he had cut altogether…

She hoped Luke and Tear would find happiness, or that Peony and Nephry could find some way to reunite, or perhaps Asch would find his ally Noir compatible enough for something more. After all, that would technically place Nam Cobanda Island under the crown's domain while allowing it to retain its freedom in practice without any fuss. She hardly knew Peony, but he was a very interesting man. She didn't want to turn any of them down, so she hoped that the decision would be made for her. Oh, what to do…

"I'm sure you'll make the right decision. Thank you, Natalia." She really had grown up into someone who would be a good queen for Kimlasca. He was proud of her. She would be a wonderful wife, he knew that. There were futures in which they were incredibly happy together. Of course, he was shown, there were futures in which he and Nordheim were incredibly happy together. The future held infinite possibilities indeed.

Why had he thought reading the seventh fonon was the best way to discover out what to do? If even he had the bad habit of relying on the Score… The vision that was Lorelei's rebuke was mild under the circumstances. Simply an improbable scenario instead of a scarring one.

Although Natalia's caring, both for him and for his happiness, was soothing he wanted something more solid. Van's death, even a swift one at his own hands… As they caught up to Luke he found himself eyeing his other half as he'd eyed monsters during hunts as a child. It had been his father's cousin who had taken him in hand and told him what made for tasty prey. His changed eyes could see past the surface to that truth in humans as well.

Who gave, who took, the power that lay there? He could see it all.

Jade's tightly bound power that would spill out in gratitude to any who could unlock it. Guy's chivalrous kindness that overflowed like a fountain. Anise's possessive calculation: give to her and she would keep you sated to assure her own future supply. Natalia's careful nurturing of anything in sight. Tear's hesitant eddies, skittish and inconstant as the moon but as alluring.

Luke shone, glimmered. The light of a firefly once, the light of a flickering flame now that he grew more stable and healthy. Dancing, joyful.

Asch knew he glowed hot, like banked coals. Dim but constant, hot enough the air shimmered with it. He needed Luke's light, Luke craved his warmth.

He was _hungry_. But he couldn't just take, not here.

But why here? They could use hyperresonance to go somewhere else and then find Tear, Natalia, Sync, or the foundling again later. An excuse would be easy to think up.

_Are you sure, Asch? _

_Why not? And how did you know what I was thinking about?_

_I felt you tasting._ There had been an especially alluring little shimmer-shiver right afterwards. _I'm hungry, but I can wait. _

Asch realized something. _You're always hungry. _

_Ravenous. But not just for your fonons. It's my fonon that gives and takes this, that flows. Being cooped up in a body… it's too much like being cooped up in the core. _The amount that flowed from Luke even when he didn't have any for himself… No wonder Guy who starved for his family's love had become addicted. And not just him. Natalia who had lost Asch, Tear who was losing Van, Jade who thought Nebilim's loss had long scarred over, the replica-replacement Ion who had few who truly saw him, Anise whose parents had never been reliable, their love true but spendthrift… Luke loved, and they loved back, protected the eyes that fed them.

They'd thought he was a jerk, and yet they'd cared for him. Ion knew better, Asch saw, Ion was a fon master and sensed that emotion even though Luke could only channel it through actions, not words. Akzeriuth… they'd thought he'd betrayed them. If he loved them, he couldn't be the sort of person who would do that. So he must have been lying to them all along. _I want to feed you. _Just hearing that was tempting._ I know. So don't let my hunger control you. Humans want to be loved and needed. You love Natalia. Don't stop paying attention to her and focus on me just because I'm an easy source for it. _A hungry man would work hard for food: someone who was stuffed wouldn't bother. Asch could have everything he craved from Luke, but that didn't mean he should forsake other bonds.

_I won't. But we're both hungry and they can look after themselves. We'll have to answer questions as soon as we're back in Daath. _Asch knew Luke was dreading the world's leaders' reaction to finding out he was Lorelei, especially their uncle. And Father. _It will be easier on both of us with full hearts. _He couldn't help imagining the feeling of Luke's heart's blood, the memory sending itself with his thoughts. _And we just… No, I just killed our teacher and you… Let us pool our strength. _

"My my my, how narcissistic of you." The Necromancer had snuck up behind him _how_? Asch spun, hand on his sword. "I wandered up here to preserve my blood sugar. Such a saccharine atmosphere can't be healthy for someone my age. And I find you hanging behind eyeing those three, and given how your eyes were glowing and your reaction just now I think it is safe to assume that it was not Natalia that invited such a look."

"It's not like that!" Or who was he telling that to? Normally relations had definitions: mother, father, brother, friend, lover, but what was the bond between an original and a replica? Asch had no bonds, he'd severed them all, and now the only bond he had was to Luke. Luke had been right to warn him, he realized. Luke was everything to him right now, and if Asch decided to have part of that everything be lover Luke would not be able to refuse him. To take advantage of Luke's generosity like that, when Luke was so vulnerable would be wrong.

"It's not like what?" Jade asked with obviously false innocence.

Asch calmed himself down forcefully. "It's the… it's related to the Big Bang Effect. You called it consumption? Everyone's fonons require the memories other people have of them to stabilize themselves, to remind us of who we are. I was… cut off from everyone but Van and some acquaintances for so long. Luke is, right now, the only person who knows the true me. Even I don't know myself. I wanted to fight him to confirm my identity even before this happened. He's not only my replica, who contains the memories of who I was before I became Asch the Bloody, he's also Lorelei. He knows everyone's true self. No, selves. Everyone we could possibly be, all the choices I have. Once I felt him… Even you, Necromancer. He is all of us in our infinite potential. The amount we love Lorelei is the amount we love ourselves added to the amount we love all the rest of the worlds and time. I can't help but love him more than Natalia, because he is Natalia and more than her."

Asch realized this as he told it to the older man, narrowed red eyes dissecting him as Jade had almost done for a living, seeking ways to bring back the fonon-disrupted dead via medicine instead of fomicry. "Only someone… only someone who hated himself could hate Lorelei. Only someone who hated the world." He shook his head to clear it: that was saying too much, and aside from the main issue. "We're still not entirely stable. We need to pool our strength to replenish it, and since we both want to live that instinct draws us together."

"I see. If it's necessary to your survival, then get to it." Jade hadn't come this far to lose them.

Asch nodded, they made their excuses to Guy and Natalia, and they curled up in the flower meadow.

"Did you see that?" Guy looked at Jade for confirmation.

"Asch petting Luke's head and Luke looking as mindlessly content as the emperor's rappigs? Sadly, yes." Natalia didn't seem to be jealous, although Guy was and Jade realized he might possibly be, just a small amount. After all, they had been the men Luke had looked up to, foolishly and not. Perhaps this was something too far outside of their human experience for jealousy to be justified.

What was this possessiveness? Jade gave the feeling a cautious examination. He rarely had feelings, especially not ones that jumped out and surprised him. The feeling that Luke was something that needed to be safeguarded? Well, if Luke was Lorelei heaven forbid he wander around loose with that sort of power. Of course Luke had always had the power to destroy cities, so why the change? Or perhaps, if he thought that Luke was influencing his feelings, Jade had been kept from focusing on Luke's destructive potential before this?

"It's wonderful that they've finally become friends. Asch reminds me of how you were sometimes when Luke was still just like a baby, Guy." Natalia sighed happily.

"Sort of, I guess." Guy laughed ruefully. "Maybe I am jealous._ I_ used to be his big brother."

There was more to it than that, and everyone knew it. What more remained to be seen.


	11. Eternal

A/N: The epilogue. Thank you for bearing with me as I write such weird things. God _damn _it these people are hard to write well. I'm only now beginning to get enough of a grasp of sociology (psychology of societies) to write for Discworld. (Best. Book. Series. Ever. Do you like Jade? Read Terry Pratchett, you poor deprived soul.) Dealing with an entire cast of evolving characters who are undergoing massive changes and are at such fragile balances that slight tips either way could have resulted in, oh, Luke joining Van is like balancing plates on straws.

I suppose I can only be thankful that my Jade muses generally don't have any inclination to associate with people that have either gone crazy/remind them of themselves when they were young and stupid. If they teamed up I'd be in trouble.

Or, no, they'd probably just force me to stop writing fic because they had enough of that nonsense for all of their lifetimes in the game already, thank you very much, and then go out drinking and putting the fear of god into people. I mean, I have what, at least six distinct Jade muses? Can you imagine the characters' reactions to seeing six Jades?

-

In Luke's heart the white flowers had all long since bloomed, selenias that grew strong in the light of the power he embodied. As the glass shards vanished their numbers remained constant, but when the shards were finally gone the flowers started to vanish. No longer covered by them, a soft carpet with a symbol Asch recognized somehow was revealed.

Asch worried that the flowers vanishing was a sign of something bad until he, a few months later, managed to keep his eyes on a patch of them long enough to see one fly free.

The dead returned to the fon belt, he knew when he saw it, to rest until they were swept up by the Planet Storm and formed the seeds of new lives and memories. But Akzeriuth had been annihilated, its fonons damaged and the seventh fonons that held the selves of its dead broken as well.

Shattered pieces, hateful broken remnants that hated the life they were cut off from: Asch suddenly realized the source of the miasma, something that had baffled even the people of the Dawn Age.

There had only been around three million people on Auldrant for two thousand years, the number gradually declining. There were only that many intact souls remaining, and over time the miasma would seep in and destroy others, like Tear had been corrupted until saved by Ion.

If Luke hadn't caught them, the people of Akzeriuth would have indeed been consumed by the miasma.

Everyone thought that relief the emergency was over was the reason everyone was having children left and right. That was part of it, but the real reason was that there were children _to _have, now.

He'd underestimated Luke again, it seemed. It hadn't just been Van's betrayal that had caused them both to start starving after Akzeriuth but nurturing ten thousand torn-apart souls.

Luke had said that he was willing to die if it would bring Akzeriuth back. He had not been kidding.

Now that he possessed his true power he didn't have to die, not to bring them back to the fon belt and not to recreate the city, calling back the fonons it had been turned into and reminding them of their old shape.

They were going to need the space, for one thing.

That prediction was only logic, not prophecy. Natalia and Peony might have decided to have only one child so that there would be no chance of a second one being co-opted by some group trying to separate the two countries after the rulers that had merged them by marriage were safely dead and gone, but between Guy's love of kids and Tear's love of the cute they were going to end up repopulating the Hod Archipelago at this rate.

Jade had said several times that the last thing the world needed was him breeding, and he already had enough accidental children to look after. Noir also had a large number of dependants and no intention of gradually being blown up like a balloon for nine months. The idea of marriage happening was ridiculous but everyone knew what was going on: it wasn't like either of them had any shame whatsoever.

Luke could find out (obviously), or in fact already knew since he knew everything but was deliberately not thinking about Sync and Anise. Given their homicidal reaction to Jade's last dig at them the answer was probably no. For now. Sync being, at the same time, in the 'girls have cooties' mental age bracket and the teenage physical age bracket was probably driving him insane, not that anyone would notice. There had been an admission at the last commemoration of Lorelei's ascension to the fon belt that Anise was, "Pretty cool."

Asch did his best not to look at the future or the past, at the infinite potential. If he looked at the infinite then the importance of this reality, in all of everything, was mathematically zero. Or the probability of it, at least.

He had to stay narrowed down to see them, and now that he understood what it was to have others who cared for him and to care back he didn't want to lose that. Luke, being what he was, didn't have this problem.

It had taken work. It had taken work to remember (in all the meanings that word had for someone so connected to the fonon of memory, song, and time) Natalia and what they had enough to love her. Once he'd managed that Guy was easy. But romantic love? A marriage took an insane amount of work to sustain for anyone, even with love. If he was having to work so hard just to feel the prerequisite emotion, he simply wasn't going to be able to have a relationship with that sort of commitment with anyone.

Except perhaps Luke.

Although calling what they had love almost cheapened it. They weren't a man or a woman, and sexual attraction was something that didn't even have to be part of the physical attraction. He wanted to hold Luke, and that could be overwhealming as it was without bringing sex into it. Lorelei being a fundamentally sexless being (if seventh fonons were male then every single person on the planet would be male, for one thing: the fonon was something gender could be written on, it didn't have an innate one) just made it less likely.

He was human (mainly), he had urges, but the idea of the physical action and Luke together seemed perverted. No, not the right word. Degrading? Defiling? Unworthy?

They'd accidently shared a wet dream once, and mental ecstasy translated to physical well enough. He didn't have to touch Luke, much less in _there_, to cause him to experience the sensation of it, a memory snatched from the infinite and woven into a fantasy.

Compared to that squelching, and pain, and the possibility of making Luke bleed, the possibility of harming him was utterly unappealing. The feel of his warm body, the scent of his hair, the taste of his love…

He wanted to consume him, to drink in those sensations until the bliss became enough his fonons couldn't hold it and the memory of who he was sometimes. To drown in bliss. He might, for moments, but Luke always called him back.

Peony had taken his cue from Jade and retained his usual irreverence. Ingobert had been very grave, Teodoro as well, confronted with the realization of just what it was they had so casually condemned to death at Akzeriuth. The Order bowed and scraped, but fear of them was soon replaced by utter terror of Anise and Sync.

It was hard to be afraid of Luke, and that was because they knew him. Even Jade had needed some time and Asch's prodding to realize that it was strange that he'd first taken the idea that an imbalanced child could destroy cities and then that the same child was Lorelei so calmly. He should have killed Luke and tossed him into the miasma right after Akzeriuth without any hesitation. He was a mass murderer and a threat to Malkuth. Yet he'd known that Luke was nothing but an idiot, not someone who would repeat the crime. Not any sort of danger despite his history and mental state. He'd _known_, and logic had nothing to do with it.

Asch might be the only one who had seen Luke's mind, but everyone had rested there, waiting to be reborn. In Lorelei's, for most of them, but it was the same person.

Luke was child and parent to all of Auldrant. Tear had wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, and still did, but she was sixteen when they met. When she got a little older the idea of herself, Luke, and sex simply didn't work. He wasn't a year older than her, he was nine years younger. She wanted someone young at heart, but not _that _young. Asch, once she had gotten a clue, had enlisted Jade and Noir. Guy was rather grateful, once he stopped screaming and passing out and they finally untied him from the Albiore's console (fontech was to Guy what a stuffed cheagle was to Tear and her own traumas), anyway. Their first three kids were named after them, as extorted, although Jade had ended up with a female namesake due to insisting on the firstborn.

"Saphir?! Nephry's getting remarried and it's to Saphir?!" The announcement of the engagement had caused Peony and Jade to get really, really drunk and Peony to start pursuing Natalia very, very fiercely on the rebound. Nephry, unrepentant, had said poor Saphir needed someone to watch over him. Peony and Jade were people that needed to be watched _out_ for. Saphir didn't seem to have been given much choice in the matter. Nephry had chosen an around-the-clock job running a city, usurping the power of her decrepit and half-senile husband, over a life of ease as the emperor's kept woman. Apparently Jade's controlling tendencies ran in the family.

The world that was in front of him was interesting. No, enthralling. He'd once hated the world and everything in it. Hated himself. It was just hard, to drag himself away from Luke. If Luke hadn't promised to kick Asch out every morning no matter what arguments he mustered he would have found excuse after excuse to delay and delay leaving his haven, his heaven.

It was worth it, it truly was, but he still couldn't help hating mornings. From the instant Luke had dropped his protections and let Asch know he was welcome he'd craved being here more than anything. Perhaps he truly had all along.

He'd been a weapon, of Kimlasca, then Van, then the world. He'd always had to fight but Luke didn't see him as anything but what he was. Luke didn't force him to earn his place in Luke's heart. He could rest.

Destroying the only person that knew them like that… he understood why the originals who had been 'saved' by the Big Bang (cheagles didn't grasp things well enough for the one that still remained at Sheridan to be left devastated instead of depressed) at the expense of their replicas had never recovered. If anything had happened to Luke…

No, he would have had to live. For Luke.

But thank Lorelei he wasn't saddled with that impossible task.


End file.
